Existing users, 
Narcolepsy
sleeps your computer when energy saver won't
Version: 1.0
Needs refinement
Feedback Type: Review
Contributed by: OregonRebel Sunday, April 05 2009 @ 01:19 AM PDT
Product Platform: MacOSX
Used Product For: Less than a month
Recommend Product: NO
Only used Narc. for a few days now, but It works too well sometimes.
When running Narcolepsy, my MBP has been going to sleep while I'm actively using it. Two nights ago I got really ticked off because it went to sleep about 8 times (AARGH!-it just happened again!!!) while I was surfing.
Narcolepsy's description says "designed to not sleep if iTunes is playing, if DVD Player is open, or if EyeTV is playing or recording." What about when a browser is actively being used?! And today I was trying to wipe a drive using Disk Utility; I started it before I left the house, and when I returned I found that DU had stopped just a few minutes into the first pass because the computer had gone to sleep-several hours wasted there! Narcolepsy should be pre-programmed to not sleep when Disk Utility is running.I believe Narcolepsy is supposed to make the computer sleep when the Energy Saver prefs are set to, not FORCE the computer to sleep when it's NOT supposed to, and the Energy Saver is NOT set to force a computer to sleep when Disk Utility is working.
Narcolepsy does usually cure my computer's insomnia, (Just slept AGAIN!) but I can't deal with all the unnecessary sleeping so I'm quitting it and not using this version anymore. This only seems to happens when the sleep setting is 5 minutes or less; anything over that and it hasn't interfered with my browser. Normally the sleep setting is 30 minutes, so this isn't a problem, but I lowered it while diagnosing the sleep problem and testing Narcolepsy.
And I never know when it's going to occur: Once I timed it and it went to sleep almost 16 minutes after waking, as I was actively moving the cursor about. Other times it's happened at 7 minutes. 2 nights ago I went to bed and when I awoke, only the display was sleeping; the HD was still awake.
The developer says the script can be modified to include or exclude apps that affect it, but although I tinker a lot, I haven't gotten into Applescripts.
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