If you want to download Dashcode you’ll have to sign up as a Developer (it’s free). After you build some cool widgets send us links to them and we’ll post some of stuff you guys put together.

I also rarely shut down my Windows-based laptop and desktop, since I use the hibernate function, instead. While Windows also has a standby functionality, it’s not as fast as the Mac’s sleep (takes forever to go to standby mode and it’s the same when waking up), nor is it as power-efficient (at least in my perception).

However, there’s a drawback with most Macs that I’m sure you’re familiar with–there’s no Hibernate functionality. This means when you lose power or remove your notebook’s batteries, the contents of the RAM will be wiped out, except for some PowerBooks that have a capacitor to retain RAM contents for a few seconds while you switch batteries. Windows’ hibernate, meanwhile, basically saves all RAM content into the hard disk and hence your compter’s state is saved even if the machine is completely powered off. You can check out the power management portion of X vs XP if you’re not familiar with the differences between how Windows XP and OS X handle these.

Some newer PowerBooks have a safe sleep functionality, which saves RAM contents to the hard drive before going to sleep. But the notebook only completely powers off when the battery level is too low to provide power for the RAM to holds its contents. While there’s a command-line hack for putting your PowerBook into safe sleep everytime you make it sleep, it could get quite cumbersome to have to go into Terminal to do this. And you would have to change the power management settings manually each time you want a different sleep mode.

Fortunately, there’s the Deep Sleep Dashboard Widget that lets you deep sleep your Mac at the click of a mouse button (Apple download page here).

Deep Sleep is a simple Dashboard widget which allows users to put their computer into hibernation mode, also sometimes called software suspend mode. This widget only works on a limited number of Apple computer models. Please read the included documentation for more details.

What’s the advantage? You can expect longer battery life in between charges, since deep sleep consumes zero battery power (except probably for the extra time writing RAM contents onto hard disc and loading it back when the computer wakes up). The drawback? Sleep and wake up times are longer.

It works on a limited number of Macs, though, and I don’t think mine is included.