Possible fix for Lion battery life and heat

[calvol]

coolbook is program that does it for older core 2 duos ,waiting for an update on i5/i7 platform
got my fingers crossed

It won't happen, Sandy Bridge doesn't support undervolting. The only way to fix this is for Apple to throttle TurboBoost, which will of course hurt top-end performance.

 

[di1in]

i still don't get how that applies to the Air

AFAIK:
If you're using the old air - the undervolted c2d can't handle as much as the mbp processors so the c2d + integrated combo takes a lot longer to handle the same load. So when a graphics intensive process needs to be done the mbp would finish it faster and more efficiently.
So the MBP loses when the OS switches to discrete - in integrated the loss is negligible. The air loses because it wasn't built for so much constantly graphic intensive processing.

If you're using the newer airs, the sandybridge has higher tdp which runs the fans faster as well. This is most likely due to the heat emission coming from a smaller area due to the cpu+gpu combo. And when turboboost kicks in it runs higher than tdp as well which is why under full load the 2011 air is a lot louder than the 2010 ones (i got the loudness point from the forums, i dont own an air).

So like Calvol said, there ain't much you can do to solve this problem on an air other than getting SL until Apple does something about this.

 

[toi]

if i had a company that's able to produce a sheet battery like in the sony vaios , i'd probably sell 1 battery pack to almost every macbook air 11'' owner out there.

 

[Gemütlichkeit]

Such a shame, all that effort for what could have been achieved with a few simple words.

a picture is worth a thousand words

 

[radiohead14]

So like Calvol said, there ain't much you can do to solve this problem on an air other than getting SL until Apple does something about this.

have people with the Sandy Bridge MBA's switch back to Snow Leopard? have they reported actual increase in battery? and so you're saying that an update to Lion could possibly improve battery life?

 

[di1in]

have people with the Sandy Bridge MBA's switch back to Snow Leopard? have they reported actual increase in battery? and so you're saying that an update to Lion could possibly improve battery life?

I was simply reasoning. I'm not aware of anyone who've downgraded. I mentioned update in reference to calvols earlier post concerning the turbo boost.

 

[2IS]

C'mon.

If you'll look at the process table (either manually or through Activity Monitor) you'll find the Dock has a very small footprint. It's about as inconsequential a process as you'll find.

Well since you don't know, i'm going to let you in on a little secret...

The CPU isn't the only component in your computer that uses power. The same thing happens on a windows PC. With all the default visual effects on, particularly transparency, battery life tanks. Turn off the visual bells and whistles and you gain at least another 50% run time.

I was simply reasoning. I'm not aware of anyone who've downgraded. I mentioned update in reference to calvols earlier post concerning the turbo boost.

He is assuming based on zero evidence that turbo boost is causing the problem. He and I have went through this before and after several pages of going back and forth provided nothing more than his opinion on the matter. While he may actually be correct this time, that it's a GPU load that is decreasing the battery life, it's not a phenomenon that's limited to Intel's IGP. Visual effects use more power, plain and simple, regardless of GPU.