Macbook Pro - put display on sleep, computer still running...

Hey is there any way I could just put the display on sleep, and still keep the computer running?

I'm about to go on a 11 hour flight, and I've left my iPod to my dad, so basically what I want to do is this:

Start iTunes, sleep the display, and then just play music, and use the remote for pause/play, next/prev. I figured that would save me some battery, right? (Well not the entire 11 hours, but still some battery would be saved.) I know dimming the backlight all the way down isn't really turning it off..

How can I do this?

Would be much appreciated, cheers!

 

You can tell it under Energy Saver preferences, tell it to put hte display to sleep after 1 min of inactivity.

 

But wouldn't iTunes playing music keep it "active" ? Or me using the remote to play/pause, next/prev?

 

Interacting will make it wake up. Current processes will not keep it from going to sleep. Inactivity is defined by the lack of user input in this case.

Then again, mine occasionally fails to obey that...

 

Alright so interacting with the remote wakes the system up.

Any other ideas?

 

No other ideas.
I would probably go ahead and drop it to the lowest brightness and use the 1 minute sleep delay. That should give you a good boost.

 

just don't interact with it, that alone will save you the most amount of battery life.

make a few playlists before you go, and then just let them play, keep yourself from searching for a song for each specific moment and just let it play.

and turning the brightness down to nothing will probably be the biggest factor anyway, also, why do you need to use the remote control? if you are on an airplane there aren't really a lot of places to put a laptop besides right in front of you.

make sure to just disable everything you can to save battery life.

 

Yeah, that's what I'll do, a playlist.

I wanted to use the remote to navigate in the dark, given that I would somehow sleep the display...

 

well you can still navigate in the dark by simply turning the brightness all the way down/off, using the remote will not will not adjust the brightness on the display if it is manually set all the way down.

and a cool side note, you can put your mac to sleep by holding down the play/pause button on the remote, a little sleepy remote icon will pop up on screen, and then it will go to sleep, and you can wake it back up with the remote as well.

as a side note, I don't think having a display timer that turns off the display after 1 minute, is any different in terms of battery performance, from just manually turning off the display backlight using the brightness buttons.

 

I don't think I was very clear.

I meant navigating through tunes in iTunes with the remote, while the display is dark

 

yeah, what is the problem? I am doing it as we speak.

set the display to turn off after 1 minute, turn down the brightness until the screen backlight is off, and iTunes away. if you don't do anything for 1 minute and just let the music play, the screen will remain completely off, if you want to navigate through songs, the "screen" will turn back on, but the backlight will still be completely off and won't re-adjust.

 

Oh cool, I'll do that, thanks

 

haha, I'm glad we are on the same page now ^_^