Macbook Air battery life?

[geekygeek]

I have coconut battery life installed, and it says I only have gone through 7 charge cycles but only 95% of my battery capacity !

 

[Travisimo]

Installed Coconut Battery on my 11" Air. Why does it say my laptop is 26 weeks old? I've had it for a few days now and it shows 3 cycles and 97% battery capacity.

 

[geekygeek]

Installed Coconut Battery on my 11" Air. Why does it say my laptop is 26 weeks old? I've had it for a few days now and it shows 3 cycles and 97% battery capacity.

I'm in the middle of a calibration, hoping that it provides better results. My laptop says 26 weeks old because it was built and assembled 26 weeks ago.

 

[KPOM]

Installed Coconut Battery on my 11" Air. Why does it say my laptop is 26 weeks old? I've had it for a few days now and it shows 3 cycles and 97% battery capacity.

Coconut Battery isn't accurate with the manufacturing date of newer Macs since Apple changed their serial number system (which Coconut battery uses to estimate the date). There is no way that your Air is 26 weeks old, since the Core i5/i7 processor in it was only released in June.

Anyway, I'm using my 11" on a Wi-Fi flight with Windows 7 in Parallels, and after about an hour I have used up about 1/3 of the battery. Not bad considering that I have 2 OSes running, and both are connected to Wi-Fi and are accessing the Net.

 

[Travisimo]

I'm in the middle of a calibration, hoping that it provides better results. My laptop says 26 weeks old because it was built and assembled 26 weeks ago.

What do you mean? Surely they don't build these things 6 months in advance?

 

[Esquire1]

Keep it plugged in if you want. The Mac pulls energy to only the laptop at a certain percentage,instead of pulling energy to the battery, too. You paid a little more money so you wouldn't have to think about this nonsense.

 

[geekygeek]

Coconut Battery isn't accurate with the manufacturing date of newer Macs since Apple changed their serial number system (which Coconut battery uses to estimate the date). There is no way that your Air is 26 weeks old, since the Core i5/i7 processor in it was only released in June.

Anyway, I'm using my 11" on a Wi-Fi flight with Windows 7 in Parallels, and after about an hour I have used up about 1/3 of the battery. Not bad considering that I have 2 OSes running, and both are connected to Wi-Fi and are accessing the Net.

I almost did a calibration, I didn't let it rest for 5 hours before I charged it. I did see some results. The battery life on coconut now is 96%. If you say Coconut isn't accurate, what program should I use? Also I want a free one

 

[jackyyeow]

I visited my friend again and I played around with his 2011 i7 13". At 5 bars of brightness, with just safari opened with 3~5 tabs, no flash, I'm getting a whooping 5mins/1% for light browsing! I did like 30mins and the battery was only like 6%, and with that kind of power usage the i7 13" is definitely capable of pulling off 8 hours of light browsing. I'm getting more or less the same battery life out of my coolbook'ed 2010 13" ultimate. Amazing machine, make me want to sell off mine but I just had it for like a month.

 

[GGJstudios]

I almost did a calibration, I didn't let it rest for 5 hours before I charged it. I did see some results. The battery life on coconut now is 96%. If you say Coconut isn't accurate, what program should I use? Also I want a free one

I prefer iStat Pro, as it tracks much more than just battery.

 

[arcangel6]

Hi,

I charged my MBA 13" overnight and decided to try playing a movie to see how long the battery lasts using a screen brightness 1 bar shy of maximum and a keyboard back light also 1 bar shy of maximum. I had the sound off and played a digital version of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (special extended edition) that runs for in excess 4 hours. Bluetooth and WiFi were on with a Magic Mouse connected via Bluetooth. Admittedly not the most taxing task for a computer but I got 4 hours 15 minutes from my battery before the unit shut down. Considering both the screen and keyboard brightness levels I think that is pretty good life. This will be the first recalibration charge I've done since getting the computer.

I will note the following: I checked the computer from time to time and increased the volume level just to listen to the movie. There was one time when the movie image and the audio were slightly out of synch. This was corrected by hitting pause, then play again. The movie played fine from that point on. The LOTR movie's file size is 3.69 G.

Regards,

Joe

 

[2IS]

LiOn batteries should be on the charger when not in use for maximum life. I am not positive but IMO running to 2% everytime is not good.

Not exactly true... The MBA uses LIPO batteries. If you drain them all the way you damage them, but they have a cutoff so it's not an issue. When your MBA shuts itself off that doesn't mean the batteries are dead, it means you hit the safety cutoff so you don't over drain them, so that's one thing you don't have to worry about (over draining) unless of course, you let it run to cutoff and don't charge it for another several months causing them to naturally deplete below safe levels.

Secondly, if you won't be using the MBA for a good length of time, having about ~70% capacity is where you want it at as a "storage charge"

 

[bursthead]

One thing i have been noticing is Chrome uses up a lot more battery than Safari.. Even with click to flash installed..

I have had to move to Safari if I need longer that 5+ hours.. I wonder if anyone else has similar experiences.

I also have time machine off, bluetooth, and the only thing running on dashboard is an activity monitor.