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Record real time usage on battery

K

kelfaij

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 25, 2011
34
0
Hello everyone,

I was wondering if you knew a software that record the real time usage of our portable with one charge.
I know that macosx is able to estimate the remaining battery life in hours but it depend of what you are doing,

So I am looking for a software with a timewatch that record the real usage of your portable and which pause the recording when you put to sleep your portable or turn it off and reset the timewatch if you plug your computer to a power supply.

In such cas I will be able to know what is the battery life with my usage.

Thanks
 
anybody?

maybe i was not clear enough ? maybe be such a software does not exist...
 
Vanillian said:
You could just buy a watch???
Click to expand...

thanks but I am a bit too lazy... in addition, i'm sure it wouldn't be accurate knowing that i put a sleep my computer dozens of time a day and there a very good chance that i would forget to start again the stopwatch... plus, you might do it manually once with a stopwatch but u will certainly not do it for 10 days and have a correct average of the battery life with your usage...

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miles01110 said:
Does not exist. It would not be a useful utility in the first place.
Click to expand...

thks...
 
kelfaij said:
So I am looking for a software with a timewatch that record the real usage of your portable and which pause the recording when you put to sleep your portable or turn it off and reset the timewatch if you plug your computer to a power supply.

In such cas I will be able to know what is the battery life with my usage.

Thanks
Click to expand...

I was wondering the same myself.

As most people are stupid and refer to the "estimated battery life", which varies on a sample by sample basis when discussing how long the battery lasts, rather than measuring the actual amount of time the machine is used and the battery consumption during this period. This would give a great indication on how long the battery lasts with *my* usage patterns.

Should be pretty simple to write a small utility to check the computer state, say once per minute, record the time and the battery charge % - I'm surprised that there isn't a popular utility for this.

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Vanillian said:
You could just buy a watch???
Click to expand...

Why buy a computer and use a spreadsheet when one could use an abacus, right?

The OP has a good point.
 
On my 13" MBA, I get between 4 and 5 hours of non-stop REAL use (WIFI, YouTube, browsing, etc).
 
Azathoth said:
I was wondering the same myself.

As most people are stupid and refer to the "estimated battery life", which varies on a sample by sample basis when discussing how long the battery lasts, rather than measuring the actual amount of time the machine is used and the battery consumption during this period. This would give a great indication on how long the battery lasts with *my* usage patterns.

Should be pretty simple to write a small utility to check the computer state, say once per minute, record the time and the battery charge % - I'm surprised that there isn't a popular utility for this.

----------



Why buy a computer and use a spreadsheet when one could use an abacus, right?

The OP has a good point.
Click to expand...

I agree. It seems odd that there 'isn't an app for that'. It would seem logical for someone to write a program to record the true 'on-time', recording, even, what software the MBA was primarily using during various segments of the test.

I'd pay a $1 for such s program..,
 
Do you have an iPhone? Or any stop watch?

Turn on timer when you begin, and whenever you put it to sleep or anything, just pause the timer. Rinse / repeat and you'll have exactly the time your battery lasted.
 
Yes, I'd like a utility that shows usage time. My iPhone shows usage time and standby time: I'd think that there could be an app that would do this for a laptop.
 
I just turned on my MBA, and it showed that I have just over 12 hours of battery life on 94% remaining (if only: it then immediately dropped to 5 hours 34 minutes) :)
 
This type of app can't exist because everyones usage patterns are different. This is why the estimated time is just that-an estimated time of your current usage.

How more accurate can you be than that, in general terms?
 
I found that once you stop thinking about the battery life, the MBA will magically last much longer than you'd imagine. I'm serious! It's all psychology.

Just put the battery indicator as % only, just like your iPhone or iPad.;)
 
what you want is "minibatterylogger".

this app plots a graph of your voltage vs time. So u can actually see the slope of the graph increase when u do more battery intensive tasks.

All in all, im getting 5-6 on my MBA13 for average real world tasks.

if i do more flash heavy stuff, it can drop to 4+hrs.
 
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impulse462 said:
This type of app can't exist because everyones usage patterns are different. This is why the estimated time is just that-an estimated time of your current usage.


How more accurate can you be than that, in general terms?
Click to expand...

The OP is looking for an app that logs usage. The fact that everyone uses their computer differently would mean we get different results but it doesn't mean the app can't exist.

It might be a crude way of doing it but couldn't you run an uptime command from terminal?

http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?uptime
 
AlecEdworthy said:
Take a look at MiniBatteryLogger as I think that might do what you want.

Alec
Click to expand...

Thanks, again - the other software is not as detailed but does what i ask for. anyway I can say that my mba old 4hours with my first usage with the soft installed. Let's see within one month what will be my average
 
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