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Does Mac Mail drain your battery?

bursthead

bursthead

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 9, 2010
282
3
I haven't been able to get more than 3-4 hrs out of my 2011 MBA... I run without bluetooth, time machine, 50% brightness, and I disabled everything in my dashboard.

I check the activity monitor and only run Chrome, Mail and one system monitor. I closed mail just to see if it was the biggest drain and I gained about an hour and half additional battery life.

Is there anyway I can run mail and still obtain at minimum a 5hr battery life, with chrome and at 50% brightness?
 
bursthead said:
I haven't been able to get more than 3-4 hrs out of my 2011 MBA... I run without bluetooth, time machine, 50% brightness, and I disabled everything in my dashboard.

I check the activity monitor and only run Chrome, Mail and one system monitor. I closed mail just to see if it was the biggest drain and I gained about an hour and half additional battery life.

Is there anyway I can run mail and still obtain at minimum a 5hr battery life, with chrome and at 50% brightness?
Click to expand...
Mail isn't a big battery drain, compared to other factors. For tips, check out the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the link below.

This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:
 
Just to add, I calibrated my battery twice and coconut battery has me at 95% battery life..

Its probably just common sense, just like on ios running mail drains your battery..
 
I haven't been timing my usage on my Air--but I've been getting a full day's worth of use out of my computer. I'll give a brief rundown of what I did with my air today.

I woke up ~9AM with my computer fully charged. Ended up heading out around 10 to my dad's place to see what was going on (I have an uncle from California visiting.) ~10:15 I'm on my Air at his place, checking my mail, forums, etc. Anyways I'm on for a good 45 minutes doing some basic internet browsing. Screens at 4 bars brightness, no backlit keyboard. I head over to my Aunt's place where my visiting Uncle is staying--they're busy going through old pictures from the 1920's. So I hang out, and log in probably around a good hour of forum trolling. During this time I'm using my Wireless Tether from my EVO. I feel like when I'm using my phone as an access point--I go through more power due to lost packets, etc. So then we head to lunch, blah blah. Anyways, due to my lack of foresight--they want to drive around my little town and I didn't drive myself, so I'm stuck in the back of the minivan while they drive around. I whip out the wireless tether again and log on for a solid 2.5 hour session, maybe longer. Finally we've driven over every single street in our little 14k person bedroom community, and we head home.

There's a gap here when I'm not using the computer again, (went golfing). Anyways after dinner, I sit down to watch the Brewers vs. Cardinals game, and probably put in around another 1.5 hours. When the game finally ended and I was getting ready to leave, my computer was saying I had around an hour left--which I think is probably safe to say around 15% battery.

Anyways, so I think I could safely say I was around 6 hours of usage. I was using google chrome on one desktop, mail open in a second and evernote on a third. I did do some youtube videos in flash mode.


Today has been one of my more active days on my air, and I'm pretty impressed.

For those who don't like 1:48 AM rambling postings

TL;DR: I had mail up all day and got 6 hours of use and could have gotten a bit more.
 
bursthead said:
Just to add, I calibrated my battery twice and coconut battery has me at 95% battery life..

Its probably just common sense, just like on ios running mail drains your battery..
Click to expand...
It's quite normal for your battery health to fluctuate up and down over time. I encourage you to read the Battery FAQ, as it explains all your questions.
 
misterneums said:
I haven't been timing my usage on my Air--but I've been getting a full day's worth of use out of my computer. I'll give a brief rundown of what I did with my air today.

I woke up ~9AM with my computer fully charged. Ended up heading out around 10 to my dad's place to see what was going on (I have an uncle from California visiting.) ~10:15 I'm on my Air at his place, checking my mail, forums, etc. Anyways I'm on for a good 45 minutes doing some basic internet browsing. Screens at 4 bars brightness, no backlit keyboard. I head over to my Aunt's place where my visiting Uncle is staying--they're busy going through old pictures from the 1920's. So I hang out, and log in probably around a good hour of forum trolling. During this time I'm using my Wireless Tether from my EVO. I feel like when I'm using my phone as an access point--I go through more power due to lost packets, etc. So then we head to lunch, blah blah. Anyways, due to my lack of foresight--they want to drive around my little town and I didn't drive myself, so I'm stuck in the back of the minivan while they drive around. I whip out the wireless tether again and log on for a solid 2.5 hour session, maybe longer. Finally we've driven over every single street in our little 14k person bedroom community, and we head home.

There's a gap here when I'm not using the computer again, (went golfing). Anyways after dinner, I sit down to watch the Brewers vs. Cardinals game, and probably put in around another 1.5 hours. When the game finally ended and I was getting ready to leave, my computer was saying I had around an hour left--which I think is probably safe to say around 15% battery.

Anyways, so I think I could safely say I was around 6 hours of usage. I was using google chrome on one desktop, mail open in a second and evernote on a third. I did do some youtube videos in flash mode.


Today has been one of my more active days on my air, and I'm pretty impressed.

For those who don't like 1:48 AM rambling postings

TL;DR: I had mail up all day and got 6 hours of use and could have gotten a bit more.
Click to expand...

Do you have it on auto update every 15min? Or do you have it on manual fetch?
 
The first day or so of using Mail drained my battery as it seemed to be creating a search index for my messages, now it has little effect on battery. (Note: it was downloading and indexing around 10,000 messages from two accounts).
 
Last edited:
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