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PowerBook 5 Hour battery??

stoid

stoid

macrumors 601
Original poster
Feb 17, 2002
4,312
29
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
I just got my BTO 15inch 1.25 Ghz with Combo drive and 4200RPM 60GB. I "calibrated" the battery by running it until the computer went to sleep, and then giving it a full charge. Still a full battery and lowest power consumption without running intense tasks (I have iChat, Safari and iTunes running) and I have only about 1:45 life. I know that Apple's site says 5 hours depends on consumption, but the only way I think I could get this computer to last five hours without being plugged in would be to either put it to sleep or shut it down. Is there something I'm doing wrong? How is it that Apple can claim five hours (what math do they do to arrive at that number)?
 
well on the new ones its 4.5, but apple gets their numbers basically doing nothing . here are some things you can do. if you dont use bluetooth turn it off, if you dont use airport turn it off. both of those drain your battery. dim your screeen as well. do not leave cd's in your computer if you are not using them. also i have noticed panther has some tweaking which has improved my battery life on my 12" powerbook. sometimes from 30 - 1hour extra time sometimes.

iJon
 
apple says 4.5 hours, running the speakers consumes power, are you running airport and bluetooth? Whats your screen brightness
 
Headphones still use power becaues you are using what is in essence an internal amplifier. If you use the line out to a headphone amp to your headphones, then you'd be consuming next to nothing from the laptop in the way of power (of course the headphone amp is the substitute power supply.) Other things to change to save power would be to dim the screen all the way down and have the hard drive spin down when not in use.
 
What is typical life while actually doing stuff

My typical laptop usage is editing code, compiling (tends to spin the drive up and hit the CPU), short test renders in Carrara (full CPU), with the wireless card going so I can get mail and keep an eye on a chat channel or two. I also keep the brightness on full for my current laptop, though the Apple screens are a bit brighter so I could probably kick them down a notch and still be comfortable. Out of curiosity, with that kind of usage, what kind of battery life might I expect from a PowerBook 15"?
 
Speaking in terms of my 1ghz TiBook 15"... i would say close to 2.5 hours. I find the that screen brightness is the biggest issue. If i turn my brightness down 2 or 3 notches, i can get upto 30min more while doing the same exact things.

Im always on the net, with airport, in 3 or 4 chat rooms and surfing the net. I get around 2:30 hours.

However, just typing code takes less CPU power than loading web pages, so your mileage may vary.
 
you might not realize it, but itunes drains the battery like a madman...

I get >4 hours with the kind of use you describe, and >3 hours with DVDs on my 14" ibook. We'll see on my soon-to-arrive 12" 1 Ghz. :D
 
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