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Battery Life in sleep mode for MacBook question

N

newmacuser13

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 11, 2006
52
0
I am about to buy my first MacBook after years of windows machines, but have a question on battery life.

If I have a fully charged MacBook on AC Power, close the cover to put it to sleep, unplug from AC, and go about 6 hours before again using the computer, what kind of remaining battery life can I expect to find?

My current Sony Vaio is useless under those conditions, and I am forced to do a complete shutdown in order to have battery to use after the 6 hour interval.
 
newmacuser13 said:
I am about to buy my first MacBook after years of windows machines, but have a question on battery life.

If I have a fully charged MacBook on AC Power, close the cover to put it to sleep, unplug from AC, and go about 6 hours before again using the computer, what kind of remaining battery life can I expect to find?

My current Sony Vaio is useless under those conditions, and I am forced to do a complete shutdown in order to have battery to use after the 6 hour interval.
Click to expand...

There should be very little depletion. Maybe 5% max? I had a powerbook I let sleep for 30 hours (Trip from Hawaii to Romania) and when I arrived it still had ~90% charge.
 
It will barely go down (I carry mine around all day with little noticeable battery loss due to sleep), but if it's going to be sleeping for a day or more from battery power, I say just shut it down. It'll eat up less battery cycles that way.
 
Thanks for the quick responses. Sounds like it works much better than my Vaio.

Now if I could just pull the trigger and make the purchase rather than endlessly watching the thread on when the C2D macbooks might surface! Decision, decisions.
 
newmacuser13 said:
Thanks for the quick responses. Sounds like it works much better than my Vaio.

Now if I could just pull the trigger and make the purchase rather than endlessly watching the thread on when the C2D macbooks might surface! Decision, decisions.
Click to expand...


Much Better!!!!!
 
Yeah, I was pretty impressed with the MacBook's battery life. While I usually have my power supply with me, I don't use it on occassion (or I forget it). In those cases, I keep the MacBook in sleep mode whenever I can...I've seen maybe 2-3% power loss if it's shut for 2-3 hours or so.
 
The sleep mode in Windows is different to one in Mac OS.

While "sleeping", Windows machine does not power the hard drive and the screen.

In OS X, the only thing that is powered while in sleep mode is the RAM (and firewire ports in desktops)

So, in sleep OS X uses much less power than WinBooks. :)
 
in my college lectures, I get an average of four and a half hours of battery life.
I have brightness at three bars, airport off, bluetooth off. I have microsoft word and firefox on.
 
dw it lasts for ages... i had mine sleeping for more than 2 days, when i awoke my beast, it still had about 75% and about 2hrs
 
Long time reader, first time poster:D


Just got my mac book pro a week ago and think something might be up with the battery after reading this thread.

Have used the computer on battery alone for a few task but not more than half an hour. this gave reasonable usage, about 20~25% drop. Over the last 2 or 3 days though I've left it in sleep mode for about 12 hour and its gone from full charge down to 6% when I turned it back on.

I wasn't sure how the macs behaved in sleep so thought this was normal but thinking it's a little excessive now.

What do you guys think?

Thanks
 
fucayama said:
Long time reader, first time poster:D


Just got my mac book pro a week ago and think something might be up with the battery after reading this thread.

Have used the computer on battery alone for a few task but not more than half an hour. this gave reasonable usage, about 20~25% drop. Over the last 2 or 3 days though I've left it in sleep mode for about 12 hour and its gone from full charge down to 6% when I turned it back on.

I wasn't sure how the macs behaved in sleep so thought this was normal but thinking it's a little excessive now.

What do you guys think?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I've been having a similar issue recently; could this be because I installed more RAM (512MB more) in my MBP a few months ago?
 
Yeah, don't worry about it. I'm not sure what the deal is, but Sony seems to especially have a pretty big problem with battery drain while sleeping or in hibernation.

When I owned my Sony Vaio s360, I could put it in hibernation with the battery fully charged at night, and the next morning it would be down to 70%, easily.

When I complained to Sony about it, they said that was "normal".
 
eXan said:
The sleep mode in Windows is different to one in Mac OS.

While "sleeping", Windows machine does not power the hard drive and the screen.

In OS X, the only thing that is powered while in sleep mode is the RAM (and firewire ports in desktops)

So, in sleep OS X uses much less power than WinBooks. :)
Click to expand...

That is not true, Windows laptops work the same way... It really has nothing to do with the OS anyway.
 
mleary said:
That is not true, Windows laptops work the same way... It really has nothing to do with the OS anyway.
Click to expand...

So why my Asus remains very warm when its been sleeping for quite some time, while Apple laptops (and desktops) go back to room tempreture?

Also, why does the battery drain so fast on PC'books when the're sleeping and why PC'desktops while sleeping remain as loud as when the're not sleeping, maybe becasue the CPU is running?
 
I have a sony a190 (gigantic 17") and see similar problems. I've actually tested this a lot because sleeping (or suspending) is important to me. In Windows the sleep mode seems to use abuot 5% of the battery in an hour so I can let it sleep over night. I mainly run Linux though and there its more like 10-12% and hour. I left it sleeping in Linux last night and when I woke up the power had completely drained ... very dissappointing. To some degree this is an OS problem because the OS has to tell all the various pieces of hardware to shut off and I think many Linux drivers aren't up to spec in this regard yet (though the new kernel, which I'm not running yet, is supposed to be much better at this). This is one of (several) reasons that I'm planning to get an new MBP C2D. I thought about trying to intall OS X just to see if the suspend works but I'm guessing the driver support for non apple hardare will be even worse. Anyone know how to improve the sleep/suspend lifetime of a laptop in Linux or windows (until I get my new toy ;->)?
 
i put mine to sleep and when i came back about 8 hours later...after classes about 20% was gone is this normal
 
I take mine to work at 7.30am, in sleep mode all day, use it several times throughout the day (not much as I use the PC, spit), and when I get home at 5pm still have 88-90% charge left :)
 
Does sleep mode hurts the battery life of my macbook pro(2011)?
I know osx has advanced sleep mode management, but I wonder if sleep mode harms battery life in comparison with shutdown option.
 
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