Is it me or is the battery indicator in the menu bar not very reliable. It fluxates from 3hrs to 4.5 hrs back to 2.8 hours everyone 5 minutes with consistent ms office use. I tried resetting the battery thing doing the restart cmd apple blah blah but that hasn't helped.
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Battery indicator not very reliable?
- Thread starter Mikebuzzsaw
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You do understand that the "time remaining" number is estimated based on your current power usage, right?
So if your MBA is drawing twice as much power right now (because, for example, the CPU is working especially hard), then the "time remaining" right now should be roughly half of what it was previously. And if your CPU power usage decreases and the MBA starts using half as much power, then the "time remaining" should jump back up. If your power usage varies up and down a lot, the "time remaining" should jump around accordingly.
If you want a totally accurate "time remaining" that tells you with precision exactly how long your battery will last, you need to wait for the new BatteryPrescience feature, which will look into the future and see exactly when the battery's going to run out based on your future usage.
So if your MBA is drawing twice as much power right now (because, for example, the CPU is working especially hard), then the "time remaining" right now should be roughly half of what it was previously. And if your CPU power usage decreases and the MBA starts using half as much power, then the "time remaining" should jump back up. If your power usage varies up and down a lot, the "time remaining" should jump around accordingly.
If you want a totally accurate "time remaining" that tells you with precision exactly how long your battery will last, you need to wait for the new BatteryPrescience feature, which will look into the future and see exactly when the battery's going to run out based on your future usage.
Mine is bouncing back and forth while I do nothing but read this thread. Actually while I read this specific page of this thread.
Stuff is going on in the background though. Like clayj said, its an estimate based on current usage and therefore is going to jump and change as you current usage changes. I personally just use the percentage. After a while you learn to gauge time off of it.