Today, over a period of 8 hours the battery lost 20% while ASLEEP. Before I put it to sleep I was sure to close all apps. Any ideas?
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Losing Battery during sleep
- Thread starter MajorTCS
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Grimace
macrumors 68040
Scottsdale
Suspended
There is a shut down feature in Mac OS X... does everyone realize this? With an SSD it boots in half a minute anyways. Shuts down in less than a second.
ayeying
macrumors 601
One thing that surprised me when I went from Windows to Mac, was the lack of hibernation on the Mac. On windows you have:
1. Shut down- Takes the longest to startup, but conserves the most battery life.
2. Hibernation- conserves about the same battery life as shutdown, but starts up more quickly because it is not a full "cold boot".
3. Sleep- Wakes up quickly, but battery life dwindles down each hour it is in sleep, because electricity is being used to maintain what is in memory (same as Mac sleep).
Of course everything comes at a cost. For maximum battery life, always cold boot, for quick startup, use sleep (but with decreased battery life). But as was mentioned, an SSD somewhat overcomes the delay to always "cold boot", but once again, it comes at a cost (higher price).
1. Shut down- Takes the longest to startup, but conserves the most battery life.
2. Hibernation- conserves about the same battery life as shutdown, but starts up more quickly because it is not a full "cold boot".
3. Sleep- Wakes up quickly, but battery life dwindles down each hour it is in sleep, because electricity is being used to maintain what is in memory (same as Mac sleep).
Of course everything comes at a cost. For maximum battery life, always cold boot, for quick startup, use sleep (but with decreased battery life). But as was mentioned, an SSD somewhat overcomes the delay to always "cold boot", but once again, it comes at a cost (higher price).
Scottsdale
Suspended
ayeying
macrumors 601
I'm already at 327 cycles in 4 months, so a few more done by Sleep/Recharging don't matter for me.
Scottsdale
Suspended
Just using it ruins it. Maybe he/she shoudl stop using it 🙂 If it is being used they way it was intended, then there is nothing wrong with that. Yes, in most cases, something can always be done in a better way, but at some point you get to the "point of diminishing returns".
No, they're using their battery.
That's like saying "I drove 1,500 miles in one month - I'm ruining my car!"
ayeying
macrumors 601
lol... that means my 4 year old car with 72k miles is ruined? or my 1 year old bike with 12k miles is ruined too?
It's a laptop, I'm gonna use it as one. If I didn't wanna use my battery, I would've got a desktop.
Well here is where I am at -
New in August 2009
Current Battery Capacity - 4770 mAh (Original 5090 mAh) = 93%
Battery Load Cycles - 51
New in August 2009
Current Battery Capacity - 4770 mAh (Original 5090 mAh) = 93%
Battery Load Cycles - 51
No, using the computer is when you are "using" the battery. A better analogy is "I leave my car running while I get ready and I am ruining my car"
If the computer is just sleeping and battery is being used for a day or so, I think that is wasteful of the battery. If you aren't going to use the computer for a long time, turn it off. Is a 30 second boot time really that painful?
Actually, Hibernation does exist on the mac, except it's called Safe Sleep instead of Hibernation. But essentially it does the same thing: suspend the RAM to disk. However, there is 1 key difference. After writing the RAM to disk, the computer will actually sleep like normal, which allows you to resume quickly, just as if you had slept. But, if while sleeping, the battery completely dies, the system reads the RAM back into memory from the disk allowing you to resume from where you left off.
Scottsdale
Suspended
That's a COMPLETELY different analogy.
Here's the difference. You have the OPTION to turn off the MBA so the battery doesn't needlessly drain completely while in sleep. This means TWO things. One, you are wasting more energy in a green world foolishly needing to recharge more often. Two, your battery needs to be sent to a landfill further destroying the environment in less than a year instead of more than three. In three years, go through three batteries instead of one. THIS IS FAR DIFFERENT THAN ANYTHING TO DO WITH A CAR AND DRIVING MILES.
We are talking about BEING RESPONSIBLE instead of foolishly wasting a finite resource and furthering the irresponsibility as some people just don't care about our planet and find this acceptable. I DON'T. I don't think anyone should consider this smart or intelligent in the least bit. Quite honestly, it's ridiculous to be so caught up with one's self to consider the planet less important than ten seconds of time. Now, calculate this over let's say half the MBA users and what do you get?
FINALLY, let's discover a truthful analogy. You're stuck in traffic and you're going to be stuck for three hours. Do you A, turn off the car and conserve fuel - B, leave the car running because you have more money and don't care about polluting the atmosphere for others? Nevermind the financial ramifications of a tank of gas and assume the weather is mild... what's the right way to deal with the situation? NOW, multiply that by ALL people stuck in traffic for those three hours... then multiply it by how many times it happens per day... then per year and so on.
The bottom line is this ignorant attitude needs to stop ONE PERSON AT A TIME! How about we ALL understand this rather than just a few doing the job we could all make a serious impact. Apple has attempted to do that, but people find it humorous to just let their batteries find the landfills so they can boot a few seconds faster. People also calculate that if they leave their Mac sleeping two days later the battery is completely drained... why does that not wake anyone's eyes? That's a clue. It's NOT just recharging the battery more it's also sending more batteries to the dump! Quite honestly, I am disgusted by the attitude of a few and how that is perceived by many.
I expect more from people...
ayeying
macrumors 601
You're right, it is a completely different analogy. However, turning it off and leaving it plugged in still drains power from the adapter. Okay, don't plug it in, battery may drain less juice than stand by but its still draining power. By the time you do plug it in, you're still going to take power from the adapter. Less power? Not really. The adapter isn't variable here. Its 45 watts and it'll always drain at 45 watts. Even if your system is off, the adapter will drain 45 watts if plugged in.
The battery designed for the MacBook Air is already rated at 750 cycles. Thats twice as many as normal conventional batteries used by companies such as Dell or HP. It's already saving the batteries from reaching the dump and you want more? Why not get Apple to use solar power then? It saves more power from being generated by power plants. Yeah, I use a lot of battery power, but I travel a lot too. Are you saying now that I should "stop" traveling or if I'm at places I should always find a power plug to plug it in to just so the battery has "fewer" charge cycles, but as many have seen on this forum, less battery cycles with a high month count tends to end up with a worse performing battery, therefore, replacing it sooner but using it less.
Your system may boot up within 30 seconds, but for some, it doesn't. I normally take up to a minute to boot up completely with all the programs and files I have installed, not including the SSD, while its fast, isn't a speed demon. Furthermore, you're the one who vouch for how SSD saves time, and now we're giving a extremely time saving option by booting up in a second and you're complaining about it?