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Battery Update in Software Update.

I guess we discovered who the fastest gun in the west is. ;)

On the subject, it is taking forever and a day for my battery to charge back up after draining it. I checked about a half hour ago and it said 54 minutes until charged and now it says an hour and 34 minutes until charged. It never took this long to charge before and I've always had decent battery life so I'm sure it's charged up pretty fully in the past.
 
17" pb @ 1.33ghz ...

My battery was fully charged after downloading; after restarting, it needed 15% more charge.

I downloaded the entire X.2.3 upgrade on about 60% of a full charge with a 40kbps dial-up connection. Discharging to 3% after restart...

It seems to recharging faster, too.
 
Originally posted by applemacdude
OK PEOPLE Calibrate your battery by letting the battery drain completely without using the computer. Let it charge back up 'till its down. Maybe this will help
Click to expand...

what do you mean without using the computer?

leave it sleeping?

i presume by simply having it turned on, you are actually putting it "in use"...
 
I'm happy for all of you that this update helped. My battery does not get past 1 hour until fully charged on one. The other just says calculating...

BUMMER dude!!!
 
Originally posted by gopher
Just finished speaking to AppleCare. My battery life dropped from 3:30 to 1:30 after the update. They tell me to

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449

- reset the power manager

And if that doesn't work, recalibrate the battery.

To recalibrate the battery though is a bit dangerous if you don't have a backup. If you don't plug the power in in time, your directory may be hosed the next time you boot up. To recalibrate the battery:

1. Let the battery drain until the screen goes dark with Energy saver turned off.
2. Immediately plug in the power and let it recharge overnight.
Click to expand...

is it possible to turn off energy saver? doesn't seem feasible...
 
Originally posted by iChan
is it possible to turn off energy saver? doesn't seem feasible...
Click to expand...

I think the poster meant "turn off Energy Saver energy saving features", i.e. by preventing screen dimming, preventing hard disk sleep, etc.
 
12-inch PB Rev A

BL @ 4
AE
Browsing and listening to music...

4:20

started at 5:15!!!!

dropped quickly and seems to have levelled off now.

oops, 4:05 now... :rolleyes:
 
Originally posted by nagromme
Nobody should be posting or comparing times unless they have actually timed it with a CLOCK before and after the update. How much time do you REALLY get?
Click to expand...
BINGO.... my time estimates on my iBook have never been anywhere close to the actual times I get.

The estimate tends to be about 1:30, but I usually get closer to 2:00 or 2:30.

I've run the battery update, but won't need to do much work on the iBook 'til next week... so I don't know if it improves anything.
 
If you fire up Terminal (Applications-> Utilities->Terminal).. and type in
"ioreg -l | grep -i IOBatteryInfo"
(no quotes) it should come up with the capacity and voltage.
 
100%

After the battery update I get to see the battery level indicator at 100% for the first time in weeks. I also noticed that it took longer to charge, so hoping it will take longer to drain.
<p>

:)
 
It seems to work great for me. Of course, the experiment is tainted by the fact that this update came on the day I got my powerbook (15 1.25ghz) back from applecare to have the white spot ridden screen and battery replaced. So, I defintely got a boost from having a battery that holds 4.4ah compared to the original one what was down to holding 2.4. Regardless, I got over two hours this morning while surfing the web (wirelessly), and writing some email and what not, and after 2+ hours the meter was still saying I had anywhere between 1:30 and 1:15 left. Oh yeah, I calibrated the battery too. While running it down, I noticed that the meter was really eradict. but, before I downloaded the fix, and calibrated the battery, it was only showing about 3 hours with a full charge. Now it shows almost 4.

But, as someone noted above, that meter fluctuates with use, so it is really only a guide. If you want to know, I suggest collecting some data by running the battery down and couple of times, and marking down the times.
 
Re: better energy management

Originally posted by miya
I think that the Energy Saver tab is terrible. I cannot tell the differences between the modes. For example, I'm not sure that the only difference between 'dvd playback' and 'highest performance' is just in the screen/sleep times. Ditto presentations. Does automatic adjusts your CPU performance automatically? If not, what's the actual difference with Highest performance? I think that there's more going on under the hood than what the configurator suggests.
Click to expand...

I second this motion of hating it. One ONE customized option? heck windows lets you save different customized options, which would be perfect for me as sometime I need to change the mix.
 
I personally miss the Energy Saver control strip module from OS 9. I think it was more flexible and I liked being able to spin down my HD on the fly with a click of a button from my control strip.
 
Originally posted by Powerbook G5
I personally miss the Energy Saver control strip module from OS 9. I think it was more flexible and I liked being able to spin down my HD on the fly with a click of a button from my control strip.
Click to expand...

Now that would be cool to have!

Does anybody know of power management utilities for OSX that go around the horrible Energy Saver?

Thanks.
 
Here's what happened here.

Rev. A 12" PowerBook, screen on lowest setting, Reduced power, Only thing open is Safari.

Battery meter:

5:25
8:08
6:06
5:25
4:43

It seems to be leveling off now, around 4:30 - 5:00. If this is true, I am going to jump for joy!
 
I think that the 8 hour time was just a quick jump while Energy Saver was calculating its actual estimated time. I don't see anything being able to make the battery last that long, although the 4 1/2 to 5 hour time does seem highly likely. I usually got 3-4 easily before the update and even before I upgraded to Panther, so if this update does improve mine, then my 15" will hopefully be in the 4 to 4 1/2 hour range, which would be awesome considering its larger screen, higher processor clock speed and 5400 rpm HD.
 
Improvement seen in 15.2" PB 1.25

After installing the update and doing the calibration thing,

I've got 2hrs 40mins out of it with another 50mins showing on the meter which should mean something around 3hrs 15 - 3hrs 30.

This is with Airport ON
screen brightness on 2 bars
and just mildy surfing the net
a couple of things running in the background but the only active ones are msn and safari.

All in all, i think that represents a significant improvement over before, it did take a while to charge it up the first time though so maybe its like a bug fix whereby the battery used to report 100% charged but it was still not quite at the max level.

BTW: which app can tell you the actual power in the battery and stuff like the charge stored in it? and what are the expected levels for the 15 FW800 battery?

Thanks
 
15" ALPB (FW800)

The update caused my reported capacity to jump from 3800 Ah to 4200.

Based on these settings;

Screen brightness 1 bar
All networking turned off
Bluetooth turned off

(iow my "airplane" configuration)

Battery life before was ~ 3:15
Battery life now is reported as 4:00

This was with iTunes playing to simulate a lightly loaded environment.

I haven't tried running it down all the way, but the time remaining before was acurate on mine, so assuming the new reported capacity is there I would expect to hit 4:00
 
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