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buying extra time from powerbook's battery (when watching films)

TheMac19

TheMac19

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 13, 2004
171
0
Pitt
I'm going to be doing a bit of traveling soon, and hoe to use my powerbook as much as possible in airports/airplanes. while I've become quite adept at finding outlets in airports, that doesn't hold true for planes. So in the hope of watching a movie in-flight, I was thinking about ripping it to my hard drive, in the hopes of extending battery life. Am I right in assuming that the powerbook will use less power if playing a movie from the hard drive, as opposed to spinning an actual DVD? So too, using headphones should help the battery life a bit too, no? (not that I'd use it without headphones on a plane...)

Any other suggestions to make the most of battery life en-route much appreciated.
 
B

brap

macrumors 68000
May 10, 2004
1,705
2
Nottingham
TheMac19 said:
Any other suggestions to make the most of battery life en-route much appreciated.
Click to expand...
Quit running processes, and dim the LCD. A dim screen won't make any differnce if you're only watching a movie.
 
emw

emw

macrumors G4
Aug 2, 2004
11,172
0
TheMac19 said:
Any other suggestions to make the most of battery life en-route much appreciated.
Click to expand...

I agree that the LCD is the largest power hog, but would add to make sure you shut off your Airport card, if applicable, so that it isn't searching/broadcasting.

I don't know that running off the hard drive is significantly better than using the DVD, although it may marginally improve performance, but you'd need a lot of space to store any significant number of movies, at at least 4.5 to 5 GB per movie.

Another thought is that some planes have power adapters (not regular outlets, but either specific airline adapter outlets or 12V "cigarette lighter" outlets), so you may want to investigate your options for on-board power. Check out http://www.seatguru.com and look up you plane to see power adapter availability.
 
E

engelhart

macrumors member
May 23, 2004
35
0
I have a revision C 17" powerbook and I found that using headphones allowed me to watch 2, two hours movies encoded in divx or xvid on one full battery.

Although I have to mention that was with the battery settings on save as much energy as possible and with all screen settings etc set quite dim. Still, not using the speakers seems to save a large amount of power in my experience (at least on the 17", can't say I have any experience on the other powerbook or ibook models.

Simon
 
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