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Just received 5400rpm. Battery Life
- Thread starter gjg554
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you have not calibrated your battery. run the powerbook until it is out of power and goes to sleep; then charge it to full capacity. this will calibrate your battery.
I got my 15" 1.25 today and the battery says 1:45 or so at full charge. that's kind of dissapointing considering that the 1:45 is with power saving features turned *on*.
I love the machine, but I would like a little more life.
I love the machine, but I would like a little more life.
10.2 never gives proper battery reads. Time it as you run your machine. It will usually be longer than the time given to you when you initially unplug it.
I had inaccurate readings with 10.2.7 as well as 10.2.8. Not really a big deal, the percent indicator works fine for me
I don't use the status, I just went by the clock. I have the 1.25 GHz 15" with the 5400 RPM drive and when I ran it down to sleep mode, I got nearly 3 hours and 40 minutes using energy saving and half screen brightness. Most often, I am not using the HD, so I don't see how the 5400 RPM drive would really eat away at battery life compared to the standard one. I checked the stats on the Hitachi website and they are both nearly identical when at rest or at low power modes. It's only at peak seek/write modes that it sucks up a significantly larger percentage of battery power.
That's fantastic. I wonder how many people are pulling down the battery menu and glancing at the readout to indicate battery life?
I'm glad to hear a counterexample of reasonable battery life with the new 15" PowerBooks.
I'm starting to think that is how people are getting their specs, because I have not once gotten under 3 hours, yet I keep hearing about people getting only 50 minutes to just under 2 hours all the time. Either they aren't checking real world battery time (mine told me 2 hours and 34 minutes, even though looking at the clock next to me, I got 3 hours and 39 minutes before it went to sleep) or they are using highest setting processor or something else. It just seems weird, because even my sister can get around 2 hours on her Toshiba with a 2.66 GHZ P4 with hugely drastic measures, and these PowerBooks use a lot less energy than those P4s do.
Another factor here- our new 15" PowerBooks have a lower battery capacity than their 12" siblings.
That's true, but it still shouldn't be as bad as getting only half the battery life like some people are saying they get consistently. I really cannot believe that I am the only one who gets between 3-4 hours battery life and everyone else is getting maybe 2 at most. Between both my batteries, I have 7-8 hours of useable life for when I am traveling, and I think that is incredible considering that could last me on a cross-country plane flight if I needed to do something on my PowerBook.
