2 hr battery on spread sheets

[jeyf]

Cleaning up some large spread sheets up with Open Office. The usbC 15" MBP was getting 2-3 hrs battery time. Its only a month old at this point. What is it going to do when its a year old?

spread sheets, apparently they are very demanding

 

[leo.andres.21]

Cleaning up some large spread sheets up with Open Office. The usbC 15" MBP was getting 2-3 hrs battery time. Its only a month old at this point. What is it going to do when its a year old?

spread sheets, apparently they are very demanding

Spreadsheets are indeed very resource demanding, especially larger files. Though it's not to say that the new macbook pros battery life is quite underwhelming.

 

[eulslix]

It depends on what you actually mean by "large". Don't know about Open Office, but at least with Excel large sheets (20k+ entries) may put even a desktop CPU under heavy load. We had some serious issues with such sheets in a company I've been working in few years ago, where we've basically used them as a DB. I'd imagine Open Office being even worse in that regards. I never was a fan of OO, but it's free, so that's that (formatting with the text editor is so buggy ... urgh).

Have you tried comparing your results to an older MBP model? Do you have any at your disposal?

 

[sn0warmy]

Working with very large Excel files (millions of data points spread across 10+ sheets) is the core reason why I had to exchange my 13" 2.9GHz dual core i5 MBP for a 15" 2.6GHz quad core i7 MBP. It's amazing how much CPU power Excel can utilize. It's no surprise to me that it can force the computer to eat through battery faster. But 2-3 hours seems extraordinarily low.

 

[eulslix]

Working with very large Excel files (millions of data points spread across 10+ sheets) is the core reason why I had to exchange my 13" 2.9GHz dual core i5 MBP for a 15" 2.6GHz quad core i7 MBP. It's amazing how much CPU power Excel can utilize. It's no surprise to me that it can force the computer to eat through battery faster. But 2-3 hours seems extraordinarily low.

Well if you stress out your CPU you won't get more out of it, the TDP of the CPU will pretty much eat up the battery's capacity in the 2-3 hours you've mentioned. I'm not sure whether there're notebooks out there fulfilling your requirements. You could try with the Surface Book, it's CPU-Battery ratio is more towards the battery end. Other than that I'm only informed about the 15" alternatives.

 

[sn0warmy]

Well if you stress out your CPU you won't get more out of it, the TDP of the CPU will pretty much eat up the battery's capacity in the 2-3 hours you've mentioned. I'm not sure whether there're notebooks out there fulfilling your requirements. You could try with the Surface Book, it's CPU-Battery ratio is more towards the battery end. Other than that I'm only informed about the 15" alternatives.

The 15" does a great job with these large files, even with 8+ other apps running at the same time. When I'm working with these large files the MBP is normally plugged into power and a 34" Dell monitor. I spend very little time on battery power and when I do I'm typically not working within Excel, so I haven't tested that to much extent.

 

[eulslix]

The 15" does a great job with these large files, even with 8+ other apps running at the same time. When I'm working with these large files the MBP is normally plugged into power and a 34" Dell monitor. I spend very little time on battery power and when I do I'm typically not working within Excel, so I haven't tested that to much extent.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about the 13" one. Must've mixed it up with another thread. Yeah, that's weird, 2-3 hours seems to be underwhelming for a CPU-only task.

 

[jerryk]

I think a lot of people use spreadsheets as way to get around having a real data base. The issues is that changes in data causes recalculations of everything that is dependent on that data. So the system has to recalculating formula A which impacts formula B which impacts formula C .... formula ZZZ.

 

[TigerWoodsIV]

I routinely maxed out my desktop at my last job working with spreadsheets. And they were just spreadsheets I built, not trying to replicate a database. When you start linking mass amounts of formulas with mass amounts of data it's absurd. My brand new ThinkPad's fan at my new job kicks on earlier than I'd expect in Excel. I sort of wish I could just use my 15" that'll be coming tomorrow since twice the memory and twice the cores can't hurt. The battery life seems absurdly low though. That's like as low or lower than I've heard for 4k video editing (which is still low). I can't imagine what you'd be doing in a spreadsheet to touch that.