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micrors4racer

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 19, 2012
354
0
Specifically the 11 inch but 13 inch owner inputs are welcome too. From my research the 2010 core 2 duos can exceed the rated 5 hours of use but has this ever been demonstrated by 2011 models? It seems to be more common to have 3 hours - 5 hours of battery with many not being able to reach the rated 5 hours.

Take note that these are just from averages and data from reviews that I have read. What is your average life with just normal day to day usage? I know that they will vary greatly with some only getting 1 hour of life from extreme usage but my goal is to see if anyone has exceeded the 5 hour mark that the laptop is rated for.

My personal i7 11 inch air lasts 4 hours 30 min with iTunes and mail and messages on, keyboard and screen brightness to 50%, and browsing on Safari with the clicktoplugin enabled which greatly helped bring my battery life within the rated specs (which makes sense as apple gives the rated battery life with no flash enabled).I also watched about 10 minutes of youtube HTML5 video when I tested. With Flash allowed to run wild it can barley get 3 hours 20 minutes of use. The battery has 116 cycles and is 11 months old.

http://www.emeraldion.it/software/macosx/minibatterylogger.html this app has a timer function which can time how long you are running off the battery unlike most programs which only give the average.
 
Last edited:

Mrbobb

macrumors 603
Aug 27, 2012
5,009
209
If getting more juice form the batt means changing my work habit then am not interested. I do what I do and the battery hopefully lasts me a full day, which with 19 cycles it does. My all day obviously doesn't mean ON all day.

I suppose when my work days changes and I need more batt time, then it's time to buy a new laptop.
 

happyslayer

macrumors 65816
Feb 3, 2008
1,027
578
Glendale, AZ
I feel your pain... I also have a 2011 i7 MBA 11" and I am lucky if I get 4 hours out of it. (And yes I run click to flash, so no flash in general) If I turn off WiFi, dim the screen to below half, disable Bluetooth and background apps I can get 5ish hours doing only word processing.

This, for me, will be the reason I upgrade in 2013 if they can improve battery life. For sure, I will also not get the i7 as I am pretty sure that is a definite battery hog (compared to the i5) and I really don't need the power anyway. I only got it because I did (and still do) need the 256 GB SSD and that was the only model in store that had it.
 

micrors4racer

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 19, 2012
354
0
If getting more juice form the batt means changing my work habit then am not interested. I do what I do and the battery hopefully lasts me a full day, which with 19 cycles it does. My all day obviously doesn't mean ON all day.

I suppose when my work days changes and I need more batt time, then it's time to buy a new laptop.

I did another test and sure enough it made it to 4:30h using the click to flash plugin. I don't think this would affect your work habit whatsoever. I still watch videos and everything. It just disables flash enabled stuff until you click on it and with the amount of flash ads that we never even look at let alone click on it really helps.
 

macdudesir

macrumors 6502
Jan 16, 2011
363
84
Blacksburg, VA
I got about 4 hrs leaving an Applescript running overnight that loaded macobserver and cnn every 30 seconds with flash enabled, with 50% screen brightness (made sure i set the computer to not sleep the display or computer) and keyboard backlight off. So I am confident that i could get over 5 hours because i am perfectly fine with my keyboard being off and screen at 1 notch brightness and i also have clicktoflash enabled (except for the test i did disable it) I do remember that the test made the fans speed up even because of all the adds. but only to about 3000rpm. ill try to attach the file that the AppleScript created and ill type the script in this post if anyone wants to use it.


repeat

open location "http://www.macobserver.com"

delay 30

open location "http://www.cnn.com"

delay 30

set thePath to "(location of your uptime log.rtf file)" & "Uptime log.txt"

set fRef to (open for access file thePath with write permission)
try
set myDate to date string of (current date)
set myTime to time string of (current date)
set myDatetime to myTime & " " & myDate
write myDatetime to fRef starting at eof

set maxCapacity to do shell script "ioreg -w0 -l | grep \"\\\"MaxCapacity\\\" =\""
set maxLevel to the last word of maxCapacity
set curCapacity to do shell script "ioreg -w0 -l | grep \"\\\"CurrentCapacity\\\" = \""
set curLevel to the last word of curCapacity
set battPct to round (100 * curLevel / maxLevel)
set output to " : Battery " & battPct & "%"
write output & return to fRef starting at eof

end try
close access fRef

end repeat

You can change the websites to whatever you want. If i remember correctly, to do this you need to create a file in textedit named "Uptime Log" i could be forgetting something, so if it doesnt work, let me know ill see if i can find out why.
 

Attachments

  • Uptime log.rtfUptime log.txt
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