TiBook battery life

[dhdave]

Just bought a 1ghz TiBook to tie me over until the G5's are available. I've had it a couple of weeks and I have a question. What kind of battery time is everyone getting?

I get about 2.5 hours out of a charge. At least that is what the battery meter is telling me. Is that about right? I've heard of people easily getting over 3 hours or more. No way on mine.

If anyone can tell me what the principle settings are that effect battery time I would appreciate it. This is my first laptop of any kind. TIA

dh

 

[trebblekicked]

i get between 2 and 3 hours of use out of mine, depending on what i do with it.

the most important thing is that you calibrate it teh first week you have it. run it down till you get a warning about ow much battery is left, if you can, run it down to 5 minutes left. Then charge it back to full.

after that, know that display brightness is a big drain on battery. when i'm wireless, i keep my display at about 50% brite. it's till good enough and gives me maybe another half hour of word processing or browsing or whatever. any program that taxes the processor is going to drain battery faster (example: the most editing i've ever done on battery is 1:45,with the display PC-laptop dim). The optical drive taxes battery, too. Leaving a DVD/CD in the drive will bring your time down.

There is an energy saver preference in the system preferences that you can set for maximum battery life. It usually puts the machine into low power consumption mode quite often, but it will help you get more life out of a battery.

 

[agreenster]

Yep--Calibration is very important

 

[dhdave]

Thanks for the responses. I didn't calibrate it immediately the first week, but I did do it. Is there anything that can be done if you've somehow managed to screw up calibration? It looks like I'm up to 2:56 on a full charge so I feel better. It seemed like everytime I was getting barely over 2 hours. Maybe an 2 and a half if I was lucky.

dh