Liking my new MBA, wondering about old MBP

[hakr100]

I've had my new MBA 13 for about a week and so far, I'm loving it. I've not noticed it slowing down yo conserve energy when running on batteries, but I seem to remember that my 2008 MBP, which I sold off a few years ago, did go into some sort of "on battery, powered down a little" mode when it was not plugged into the wall.

Or is this just a false member conjured up from my experience with some earlier non Mac laptop?

 

[neteng101]

The new ones work a bit differently - this explains their sleep states...

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4392

 

[hakr100]

Thanks, but I am not talking about a "sleep state." I'm talking about the laptop just running slower when on batteries.

 

[neteng101]

You're probably thinking of SpeedStep then...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpeedStep

Basically the older Core processors would run at full power, and when on battery, they would run at slower speeds ie. a lower power state. It has since been replaced with Turbo Boost...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Turbo_Boost

Turbo Boost means the processor starts off at the lower power state, and only runs faster as workloads increase. I'm not sure if Turbo Boost is affected while on battery vs. adapter power, but you are pretty much only running faster when there's enough activity on the computer to warrant the speed increase, so most of the time you're already running in the lowest power state for the processor itself.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

You may be thinking of SpeedStep. Not sure if that is still done with the Haswell CPUs or not.