Power settings?

[cswee10582]

Ok, I've searched for this and can't find anything on it...This being my first MBP, I can't find any power settings for it?

Let me explain, on my previous PC laptop there was a power manager to help it last over an hour when it wasn't plugged in! Terrible I know! There were three settings; Performance, Balanced, Power Save.

Now when you put it into power save mode it slowed down SOOO much but would double the battery life from 45mins to maybe an hour and a half...

So, is there any setting on a MBP that does this? or is there a program that can be used to do this?

Again, I apologize if this has already been asked...

Thank you in advance!

Chris

 

[r.j.s]

System Preferences > Energy Saver

 

[m85476585]

If you want to slow it down, you can use Onyx to install the CPU preference pane. The CPU pref pane lets you disable one of the CPU cores, but I found the difference in battery life is very small.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11582/onyx

You can also disable bluetooth and wifi (from the menu bar) if you are not using them to save power.

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

That pref pane is also in the Developer Tools if you've installed them.

 

[m85476585]

How do you install developer tools?

 

[840quadra]

As a Fourmer Windows User, you can simply type in Spotlight the name of the Windows Control Panel equivalent for OS X. Spotlight is the little magnifying glass in the top right corner of your screen.

So typing in "Power Settings" would yield "Energy Saver" the correct preference pane for that. As well as searching for "Wallpaper" would yield "Desktop and Screensaver", the OS X panel for changing desktop pictures and screen savers.

HTH

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

How do you install developer tools?

From the OS X DVD. You can also download it from Apple, but the download is massive, well over 1 GB.

 

[reallynotnick]

The processor automatically throttles depending on what you are doing so it's pretty pointless to forcibly slow it down. While you might get more battery life that way your tasks will take longer to do, even more so that you will have less time of productivity.

Only way to really conserve power is
1. Turn your brightness down
2. Turn off WiFi and Bluetooth
3. Don't use processor intensive tasks, (Flash, videos, 3d games, ect) and quit programs you don't need to run.
4. Don't use discs, if you need to use one on the road rip it to your HDD before you leave.
5. You can buy CoolBook for $10 to undervolt your computer (kinda of hard to do, but I like it. The main thing however is that your laptop is cooler to the touch.)
6. Make sure you have enough RAM and try to use a power efficient HDD (usually avoid 7200rpm drives) or use better yet use an SSD
7. If you plan on walking away from your computer put it to sleep or at least make sure the screen is set to dim pretty quickly (though that can be annoying)

I think that's about it, unless someone else has some other ideas.