upgraded from 10.2.8 and now my battery life seems shorter.. I thought Panther would increase it.. 15" PB G4 Albook.
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Battery Life with Panther
- Thread starter jameskk
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you know...I came here looking for something about battery life and the new 15" Al books. And here I found a thread with nothing much in it. For about 2 hours my powerbook has been plugged in and I like to have time (vs. percent) left to charge showing in my menu bar. It's been giving me 4+ hours left to charge and a click on it shows I have 75% charge. What gives? Meanwhile, as I was serching this forum it decided to change to 'charged'. I don't get it.
Anyone else?
Anyone else?
No, I didn't do a clean install, but I plan to in the next few weeks. I don't know that I have a longer or shorter battery life, it's just that the timer is way off when charging. The percent seems to be off too. Earlier today, I happen to glance at the time left (unplugged) and it was at :51. Within 5 minutes it went to sleep. I had to plug it in to wake it, and then after 'calculating' for a good minute, it told me it would be between 4 and 5 hours to charge - but there was about 20% charge on it almost immediatly. 
I gained about a half an hour on my TiBook... I ran it for over 3 hours today on battery surfing over airport.
I did a clean install yesterday on my iBook 700 Combo. The previous day I had run a stopwatch to check out the battery life in 10.2.8 (with patch) on a 100% charged battery. My basis for comparison was an activation of the screen saver before unplugging. I disabled sleeping and also did not allow the machine to put the HDD or display to sleep. I did the same thing with Panther yesterday and the same iBook to test out the battery life. 10.2.8 10.2.8 gave me 4 hours, 38 minutes (I've removed the seconds because they are inconsequential). With the same stuff running, Panther yield 5 hours, 3 minutes. I've always been impressed with the battery life I get on my iBook, but a 25 minute increase on the upgrade is spectacular.
I noticed an increase in Battery Life as well with my 12" (no clean install). And it seems to charge a bit faster.
My new rev B 12" Powerbook gets 3 hours and 20-30 minutes. I don't know exactly how long I got using Jaguar since I didn't use Jaguar on my 12" PB for very long (its new), but I think it only lasted for 2:50 to 3:00 hours. Any gain in battery life is good.
in Jag, I my 12" PB 1 Ghz showed 2:45 and got 3:15.
in panther, it shows 3:15, but i haven't tested it yet. So it could just be a more accurate reading in the menu bar, but I'm hoping it's a real increase.
in panther, it shows 3:15, but i haven't tested it yet. So it could just be a more accurate reading in the menu bar, but I'm hoping it's a real increase.
Re: batt life
A few possibilities. Either you have a bad battery, or you're doing something that really runs down battery life. Turn down screen brightness and turn off Bluetooth and AirPort when you're not using them and you should be okay, unless you have a bad battery.
I will just state that "charged" makes more sense than "plugged in", because when you're charging, you are still plugged in. Just a simple UI enhancement that I liked
A few possibilities. Either you have a bad battery, or you're doing something that really runs down battery life. Turn down screen brightness and turn off Bluetooth and AirPort when you're not using them and you should be okay, unless you have a bad battery.
I will just state that "charged" makes more sense than "plugged in", because when you're charging, you are still plugged in. Just a simple UI enhancement that I liked
my amazing ibook
my ibook has a real 5 hour battery on full brightness and highest proformence prosesing and 640 mb ram most of it being used by random photoshop tasks!!!!!!!!!
its a 600/cd refurb with an advertised 5 hour battery heres how its done
login as root (You have to to have the privilages) and acsess the folder privet on your (its Hidden you have to type in go to folder privet) and open var then db then system configuration or just bring up go to folder and type in:-
/private/var/db/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.xml
then deleat power manegment thats right deleat it then shut down and hold control, option, shift and the power button to reset the pmu let go then boot up and your battery will last longer and your laptop will run cool
dont wory there is no way deleating this file will screwq up your book
my ibook has a real 5 hour battery on full brightness and highest proformence prosesing and 640 mb ram most of it being used by random photoshop tasks!!!!!!!!!
its a 600/cd refurb with an advertised 5 hour battery heres how its done
login as root (You have to to have the privilages) and acsess the folder privet on your (its Hidden you have to type in go to folder privet) and open var then db then system configuration or just bring up go to folder and type in:-
/private/var/db/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.xml
then deleat power manegment thats right deleat it then shut down and hold control, option, shift and the power button to reset the pmu let go then boot up and your battery will last longer and your laptop will run cool
dont wory there is no way deleating this file will screwq up your book
Resetting the PMU might be best reviewed at apple.com/support, since it's kind of tricky. A link to one of the articles:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449
We don't discriminate against people less able to spell. We discriminate against people who don't use spell checkers.
Teen Phil, we are talking about batteries here. Most posters misspell anyway, and may not know how to spell check (right click if you have a two-button mouse). Anyway, I should add that Panther readings over a one-week span show an average 40-minute real-time gain in battery life over 10.2.8 notations in similar use conditions (Airport on/off, Mail checking/sending, Safari surfing, Photoshop editing, etc.). I can offer no technical information on why this is. The machine is 15" Al PowerBook 1.25 GHz, 1 GB ram.