Listening to MP3s with lid closed ...

I've seen some folks listening to audio files playing with their laptop lids closed and the said laptop in their cases. Is there a way of doing this with the Acer Aspire One 532 please? Mine has Win 7 Starter on it. I have noticed that when I close the lid on mine sometimes it eventually powers down, but at other times the blue /red light on the front left remains on - then I find that the battery gets run down too. Many thanks.

 

Its all in your power settings. The normal action when you close the lid is to put your computer in 'sleep' mode. In 'sleep', the orange light will flash. This is a very low-power mode that makes it so you can turn the computer back on very quickly, as it keeps the RAM and some essential components powered up. Your machine does draw a little bit from the battery in sleep.

The next state is 'hibernate'. In this mode the machine copies everything in RAM along with some state settings to the hard drive, then powers the machine completely off. This state does not draw anything from the battery but it also adds to the time it takes to re-start the machine. Its still faster than a normal shutdown/boot, but not as fast as coming back from sleep. With Windows 7, after your machine has been in sleep for a few hours it will automatically switch over to hibernate to save battery (this is configurable).

The way to get your machine to play MP3s while the lid is closed is to change the 'lid close' action to 'none'. This will leave the computer running as it was (aside from shutting off the display) when you close the lid. If you were playing mp3s when you shut the lid, it would continue to play. Understand that the machine is still on, and will continue to use the battery, get hot, etc., as it normally would. As long as the mp3 playback software you are using keeps the machine 'alive', you're music will continue to play till the battery runs out.

There are some systems (i've never physically seen them) that have some simple functionality built into the BIOS that will allow for media playback without launching the operating system. This would be the best option for using your PC as a portable media player, but i don't think its possible with our Acers.

 

Great reply. Very detailed. Very many thanks. That did the trick. Good to have an explanation of the options too. Great stuff. Thank you again - Chris B.