battery length on macbook?

[Nitromaster]

Wirelessly posted (Nokia N70-3 Ireland-Opera: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; WiderWeb 5.4.08) Opera 8.54)

has anyone measured the length of their battery using Special programs?

What time?airport/bluetooth on?
Brightness?

Also anyone know what would last longer on the battery power,osx or vista?

 

[2fives]

Everything on and brightness at 3/4 way up playing LOTR DVD it lasted 2.5 hrs in OSX and 2 hrs in Win XP.

 

[bankshot]

I haven't done any exact measurements, but I know I'm lucky to get even 2 hours on mine. Airport on, brightness below max, no bluetooth, no optical drive activity, generally little cpu.

Pretty disappointing when it originally got around 4 hours less than a year ago. I just resurrected my 4.5 year old iBook, and after an hour and 45 minutes, it was still at 65%. Haven't run it down to 0 since getting it back up and running, but even now it seems to be doing way better than the Macbook.

I have a feeling that complaining to Apple would be useless ("batteries wear out, sorry!").

 

[civilizedrat]

From the complaints, I kinda get the feeling that most MacBook holders have rapid depleting battery issues where a normal 4/3 hours quickly become an average of 1/2 hours battery usage in a matter of a couple months. Is that so? How quickly does the battery lose its maximum charge capacity in the MacBook?

How about those who haven't got those rapid depleting battery issues and have ~3/4 hours all the time .. are there those are out there?

Thanks.

 

[himansk]

i have a yr old mbp, it still lasts between 2:45-3:00hrs from the original 3:45. but i havent used the battery much, only 28 cycles on it, around 2 cycles/month for the past 4 months as i use it on my desk most of time. heavy use depletes the battery faster, and for people using the battery at a minimum should run it down to 0% every month to keep the batteries in working order for longer.

 

[johnee]

I would recommend using the battery every now and again. If you consider the physics of a battery, it's basically chemical reactions taking place which produce the flow of electrons. when your battery is 100% and 0% charged, the chemicals are polarized, that is, they are physically to the point where the reaction is done. At 50%, there is relatively even mixture of reacted/unreacted material. The point is, it's not good to be at extremes. The charging systems for electric cars typically have a charge/drain cycle of 30% to 70% charged, this helps keep the battery at its longest life possible.

 

[Mal]

I have an original MacBook (so almost a year old), and my battery was reading down to about 80% of the original capacity by October. It was replaced then because it was actually only at around 60% capacity, which was forcing the computer to shut down without warning, so now it's reading at 100% of it's original capacity, which is down from the 108% it read when I got the battery (it's apparently still reading from the old battery's level, so the new one was a bit more powerful). I still often see ~4-5 hours of battery life remaining if I'm not working it hard, and 3 hours isn't hard to get in actual operation.

jW

 

[Airforce]

I have a core duo macbook I got last July/August or so. I get 3+ hours with best battery settings on the processor, screen brightness to full.

 

[bankshot]

I have an original MacBook (so almost a year old), and my battery was reading down to about 80% of the original capacity by October. It was replaced then because it was actually only at around 60% capacity, which was forcing the computer to shut down without warning

That's interesting. Did you actually get it replaced under AppleCare for this reason? If so, I'll have to take mine in.

Currently, mine's showing a Max Capacity of 2340, with Design Capacity of 5020. If I'm reading that right, it really does have less than half of the original capacity! This is after 255 charge cycles. I'm also getting the sudden sleep quite often when it says around 10-20%, well before the usual "you are running low on power" message comes up. When I plug it in after that happens, it always then reads 0%, indicating that the pre-sleep reading was way off.

 

[Mal]

I took mine into my local Mac repair shop (not the Apple Store, so I don't know if they'd do it), and they said they stress-tested it for a while and it failed completely in the end. So it was replaced under the normal warranty (I just ordered AppleCare a couple days ago), but I don't know what you'd have to do to get the Apple Store to do it (or if it wouldn't take much).

jW

 

[applemax]

my blackbook once showed 8:30 for remaining battery time while watching a dvd - i clicked off it and back on and it said 2:15 so i think it must've been a bug.