how long has your laptop battery lasted?

jefhatfield · Oct 12, 2002

my compaq presario 1272, a pc laptop, had a nickel metal hydride battery that lasted just one year before it would not hold a charge anymore

my ibook battery, which gave me four and a half hours when it was new, now gives me almost three hours charge, fully charged, 34 months later!

.....

of course apple used the superior and then new lithium ion technology for their laptop batteries in mid 1999 when they introduced the ibook

only higher end pc laptops used the longer lasting lithium ion batteries during that time

Over Achiever · Oct 12, 2002

Re: how long has your laptop battery lasted?

Originally posted by jefhatfield
my compaq presario 1272, a pc laptop, had a nickel metal hydride battery that lasted just one year before it would not hold a charge anymore

Its been three years, and the battery on my laptop has been like crap. Like you, its a NiMH battery, and after 2-3 years, it can only hold at most one hour. If I'm running F@H which uses 100% CPU 100% of the time, the battery lasts 20 minutes!

Anyway, I think my batt has lasted this long because I've run on AC power quite a bit...

MacBandit · Oct 12, 2002

My dad is still using the original batteries for his 5300c and I think he get 3+ (he keeps the screen very dim and many other power saving options) hours out of each of them. He always discharges them fully before rechaging. Also if it starts to hold less charge he spikes it with a high current charge for a short while to break down any internal resistance.

sparkleytone · Oct 12, 2002

mine is going on one year now. aside from the occasional wierd-acting charge (dropping to zero from 15% or so) its been really nice. I only get about 2.5 hrs from it, but thats actually better than pre-jaguar.

I am also giving my brother's PowerBook an extended run for a few hours today. Its one of the original Titaniums, it's a G4 400 he got as a demo model about 4 months ago. I think this is the first time I'm getting to see the true power of a G4, because in some things its just smoking my 600MHz iBook. The battery is what is impressing me tho. Its on a full charge and is estimating a little over 4 hrs until depletion. Wow.

GeeYouEye · Oct 12, 2002

My iBook batteries (from Rev. A and 2001 Dual USB) haven't lost much in the way of charge capacity, and they can go from Walnut Creek, CA (Near SF) to Woodland Hills, CA on one charge, with the screen off, playing MP3's through iTunes. It's very nice.

EDIT: forgot to say Woodland Hills is about 10 miles from LA

robbieduncan · Oct 12, 2002

About 2 Years

My iBook (466 SE) is just over 2 years old and the battery has started to seriously not hold charge. I currently get about 1 hour from it.

alex_ant · Oct 12, 2002

On my 10 month old 550MHz TiBook, I just got 4.5 hours last night, with the screen half-way dimmed using only AppleWorks. Jaguar seems to have improved battery usage over 10.1; previously I would "only" get about 4 hours doing that.

The paint may be chipping like hell, but at least I got a good battery...

Rower_CPU · Oct 13, 2002

I've had mine a year now (PBG4 400MHz)...but I cheat and rotate 2 batteries.

So far, so good...no appreciable loss of charge or performance.

Falleron · Oct 13, 2002

Sorry guys, I have a Powebook 1400 (about 6/7 years old) + the battery is still going! It gets about 30 mins out of it when in colour mode.

jefhatfield · Oct 13, 2002

Originally posted by Falleron
Sorry guys, I have a Powebook 1400 (about 6/7 years old) + the battery is still going! It gets about 30 mins out of it when in colour mode.

117 mhz 603e processor sporting no level 2 cache, 12 MB of RAM standard with capacity of just 64 MB of RAM total, half a meg of video RAM, and a 33.3 mhz bus...all major state of the art stuff in 1996, however

apple-hisory.com states that this was the first mac laptop to have an internal cd-rom

though the lower end models starting at 117 mhz had the standard dual scan passive matrix screens, the high end model had an active matrix screen!...back in the day when that was not very common...my pc laptop from nearly three years later sports an hpa passive matrix screen

those early to mid-90s apple laptops were truly built like tanks and may even have longer lives than the clamshell ibooks put out in 1999-2000

Falleron · Oct 13, 2002

Originally posted by jefhatfield

117 mhz 603e processor sporting no level 2 cache, 12 MB of RAM standard with capacity of just 64 MB of RAM total, half a meg of video RAM, and a 33.3 mhz bus...all major state of the art stuff in 1996, however

apple-hisory.com states that this was the first mac laptop to have an internal cd-rom

though the lower end models starting at 117 mhz had the standard dual scan passive matrix screens, the high end model had an active matrix screen!...back in the day when that was not very common...my pc laptop from nearly three years later sports an hpa passive matrix screen

those early to mid-90s apple laptops were truly built like tanks and may even have longer lives than the clamshell ibooks put out in 1999-2000

The model I have is the active matrix screen + it has a whole 16Mb RAM, 1.1Gb HD + a swapable floppy/cd drive! It still runs OS8.1 great. Still in use every day.

jefhatfield · Oct 13, 2002

Originally posted by Falleron

The model I have is the active matrix screen + it has a whole 16Mb RAM, 1.1Gb HD + a swapable floppy/cd drive! It still runs OS8.1 great. Still in use every day.

wow, those were serious, serious stats for 1996...my two 1996 era pc towers had less hard drive space in them!

my pc tower from 1996 with 16 MB of RAM and a 750 MB hard drive was $2300 dollars us at the time

your apple 1400 model laptop must have cost a mint then! i am guessing 4-5 thousand dollars us

Falleron · Oct 13, 2002

Originally posted by jefhatfield

wow, those were serious, serious stats for 1996...my two 1996 era pc towers had less hard drive space in them!

my pc tower from 1996 with 16 MB of RAM and a 750 MB hard drive was $2300 dollars us at the time

your apple 1400 model laptop must have cost a mint then! i am guessing 4-5 thousand dollars us

I dont remember the price, but being in the UK, it was probably about 3-3500 pounds. It was a long time ago!

jefhatfield · Oct 13, 2002

Originally posted by Falleron

I dont remember the price, but being in the UK, it was probably about 3-3500 pounds. It was a long time ago!

with the excahnge rate at a conservative $1.50 us per uk pound sterling, that would mean it was at least $4,500.00 us at the time

but having it for six years means you got your money's worth

did you replace it with a newer mac? or PC?

jefhatfield · Oct 13, 2002

oops, i saw your profile,

dual G4...not bad

Falleron · Oct 13, 2002

Yeah, have a 8600 + a 1400 powerbook from around 96/97. They both are still in use every day. I then got a Dual 1Ghz in March of this year & am thinking of getting a new laptop at some point soon.

jefhatfield · Oct 13, 2002

Originally posted by Falleron
Yeah, have a 8600 + a 1400 powerbook from around 96/97. They both are still in use every day. I then got a Dual 1Ghz in March of this year & am thinking of getting a new laptop at some point soon.

i had a six year old power tower pro by power computing (clone company) and this tower did not have a modem...i had to buy a 56k modem separately

did your 8600 tower or your 1400 powerbook have modems? and what speed were they?

just curious

my first apple product was my ibook (builit in modem) i have now, but my dad had a performa 600 when i was about 30 and a couple apple IIs when i was a high school student

Falleron · Oct 13, 2002

Originally posted by jefhatfield

i had a six year old power tower pro by power computing (clone company) and this tower did not have a modem...i had to buy a 56k modem separately

did your 8600 tower or your 1400 powerbook have modems? and what speed were they?

just curious

my first apple product was my ibook (builit in modem) i have now, but my dad had a performa 600 when i was about 30 and a couple apple IIs when i was a high school student

Neither has an in-built modem. The 8600 uses a Global Village 14.4K modem + the Powerbook uses a PC Card 28.8K Global village card. Neither is quick, but it does fine for checking e-mail etc. I use my new tower for most internet browsing.

ArtMan617 · Oct 13, 2002

My iBook 466 SE (Key Lime, btw) which is about 2 years old can run for about 20 minutes until I run out of power, but it lasted quite a long period of time with almost constant usage considering...I need to buy a new battery...speaking of which, does anyone know of the best place to get a new battery? Would Apple carry batteries for my model iBook?

-ArtMan617

dricci · Oct 13, 2002

I get about 2-3 Hours on my 2001 iBook (got it in July), depending on what I'm doing. Under OS 9 it was a bit longer, OS X really sucks it dry faster, and warms it up faster!

jefhatfield · Oct 13, 2002

Originally posted by ArtMan617
My iBook 466 SE (Key Lime, btw) which is about 2 years old can run for about 20 minutes until I run out of power, but it lasted quite a long period of time with almost constant usage considering...I need to buy a new battery...speaking of which, does anyone know of the best place to get a new battery? Would Apple carry batteries for my model iBook?

-ArtMan617

try macwarehouse...i got my rev a yo-yo adapter there

how long has your laptop battery lasted?

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