17" Battery Life

what is the battery life like on the 17" Powerbook G4 stock specks?

The battery life on the 17" model and the 15" model is 4.5 hours.

The 12" is 5 hours.

I wish I could get 3.5 on my 15" even only running explorer and AIM on the lowest level of brightness...

m1k said:

The battery life on the 17" model and the 15" model is 4.5 hours.

The 12" is 5 hours.

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My battery life on my 12" is only abround 4 hours! Why is that? Also even though when i ordered my computer around 2 1/2 months ago, I customized it to be a 80 gb HD @5400 rpm and in Macintosh HD it says that i have 34.8 gb available, however I have not used 40 gb on the HD and it is really bothering me, other than that though i have no real problems and I absolutely love my mac and will probably not buy a windows machine again. Please help me if you can, thanks!

My battery life on my 12" is only abround 4 hours! Why is that? Also even though when i ordered my computer around 2 1/2 months ago, I customized it to be a 80 gb HD @5400 rpm and in Macintosh HD it says that i have 34.8 gb available, however I have not used 40 gb on the HD and it is really bothering me, other than that though i have no real problems and I absolutely love my mac and will probably not buy a windows machine again. Please help me if you can, thanks!

Click to expand...

The 5 hours is an estimate by Apple. I've been able to get close to 5 hours, but I have to turn the screen to the lowest brightness level, WiFi off, BlueTooth off and the processor performance to 'Reduced'. Try all of these, and you'll probably get close to 5 hours.

Another thing to consider is that some batteries are simply better than others, even if they're the same model. I was lucky enough to get an excellent battery in my 12" PowerBook, I get around 4.5 hours with Wi-Fi on and the processor to 'Automatic'. However, someone with a new PowerBook may only be able to get 4 hours max, even with everything 'toned down'.

About the hard disk: Download 'where is my disk space?' (http://www.windowstracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/18226&vid=171264&mode=info). I'm scanning as we speak, so I don't know how well it works. But try it out.


EDIT: It's not that great...

My 17 inch PB lasts about 4.5 hours with the screen dimmed halfway and little usage of the superdrive. If the backlit keyboard is lit, then it goes down to about 3.5 hours. If the keyboard is lit and I'm burning something to CD, then it goes down to about 3 hours. Not too bad considering I've had other laptops of smaller size that lasted only a couple of hours.