Battery Life and backlit Keyboard

Does having the backlit keyboard on lower the battery life. Also i am intrested in adding a 7200rpm notebook harddrive can i do that? and will it lower the battery life?


Thanks
William C.

I don't know about the back lighting, but replacing a 4200rpm drive for a 7200rpm drive will definitely affect the battery life. Even installing a 5400 rpm drive will affect the battery.

I would guess the backlight would lower the battery life quite a bit if you had it on all the time, because it does on iPods and cell phones, which use the same lighting substance (I think). As for the hard drive, it will definitely affect it, but if you set the hard drive to spin down after a period of inactivity it shouldn't be too bad.

Good luck!

the backlit keyboard is only on when it senses dark conditions. You can't manually enable the backlit keyboard on your own. The only time mine is ever on is when I am near a power outlet anyways.

The HD is user replacable though, right? Hmm, not what i expected as far as battry life my win xp notebook had a 5400rpm and i replaced it with an hitachi 7200rpm and it had no affect on battery life guess macs are different in that sense.

Edit: Theres no battery loss because i am using the Hitachi drive and apparently uses the same power consumption as a 5400.

can u replace the internal mac HD?

upgrading to a 5400 or 7200rpm drive WON'T reduce battery life, there are quite a few benchmarks which prove there is almost little to no difference.

yes the hard drive can be user replaced, but it is quite difficult and voids your applecare warranty if not done by an apple service tech. search google or check apple's support site if you need instructions

you bet the HDD is replaceable like tariq said and if you wanna do it yourself..its not that hard...just becareful...here are step by step instructions on how to do it yourself
http://61.194.6.236/pbg417h1.html

- to address the backlight keyboard..it is different than the ipod, the ipod uses LED's where as the backlight on the powerbook is fibreoptics, but yes it is going to cut down your battery time forsure, my suggestion is really to only use it when in a dark room...most of the time you can see the keys just fine under low light and turning the backlight on just a bit causes it harder to see anyways...plus if your using your book alot you get really use to the keylayout and not often need the backlight...what i will do is keep it cranked out to max brightness and use the off/on key to trigger it when needed

excellent thats what i wanted to hear. Does anyone know how CPU throttling works on the macs. Is is the same as PC's., ie. when on battery it reduces it a couple of hundred MHz.

Thanks for all the help

You can ONLY use the backlit keyboard in low-light situations, PowerbookG417.

I don't even look at the keyboard when I type at all, I know the keyboard layout that well. I think a lot of PowerBook owners (being complete computer nerds like me) know the layout of the PowerBook keyboard perfectly and therefore don't need the backlight feature at all. Apple should have incorporated the backlight into the iBook, since most entry-level 70-year-old grandmas buy iBooks than the 17" PowerBooks. Grannys probably need to look at the keyboard all the time, whereas most people who are crazy enough to buy a 17" PowerBook know a **** of a lot about programming and computers and don't even look at the keyboard when they're typing.

Sorry, I know that had nothing to do with the topic at all

tariq said:

upgrading to a 5400 or 7200rpm drive WON'T reduce battery life, there are quite a few benchmarks which prove there is almost little to no difference.

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In general, 7200rpm drive has higher power consumption than 5400rpm drives. In this case you can't change the law of physics. With higher power consumption, the battery life will be reduced.

I know my layout very well. One thing I use the backlit keyboard for is I leave my laptop next to my bad and listen to streaming loveline. Once the show is over I usually just lean over and hit the mute button since my screen is off and I'm close to falling asleep.

MoltenLava said:

In general, 7200rpm drive has higher power consumption than 5400rpm drives. In this case you can't change the law of physics. With higher power consumption, the battery life will be reduced.

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You don't need to change any laws of physics to achieve that goal all you need is a simple thing called optimization. These drives are designed to consume as much power as a 5400rpm. Apple themselves achieved this with the 5400rpm they have some adaptive power implementations that result in about as much of a power consumption as their 4200 rpm. Research it.

The new 7200rpm drives may use less power, but the older 7200 rpm may not. That is the problem.

WilliamC said:

You don't need to change any laws of physics to achieve that goal all you need is a simple thing called optimization. These drives are designed to consume as much power as a 5400rpm. Apple themselves achieved this with the 5400rpm they have some adaptive power implementations that result in about as much of a power consumption as their 4200 rpm. Research it.

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You are confusing two issues. Power management is independent of what kind of drive you have. With everything else being equal, 7200RPM drive will consume more power than 5400RPM drive. PERIOD.

Agreed MoltenLava. Think about it, WilliamC. A 7600RPM drive spins more than a 4200RPM drive. PERIOD. So the 7600RPM drive needs more power (just under 2x the amount of power the 4200RPM drive needs) because it spins faster (just under 2x faster than the 4200RPM drive).

Think about it, it makes sense.

7200rpm and batt. life if you look at these test then you see what has been said before. if i use a 7200rpm my batt life won't be shortened by 5,10,15 or more minutes. is it different on the mac, i doubt it. But i am no mac expert.

Obviously, Hitachi succeeded in getting the energy use of the Travelstar 7K60, which turns at a speed of 7200 rpm, lower than the typical demand of a fast and economical 5200-rpm drive like the Momentus from Seagate. For one, the Travelstar 7K60 has a femtoslider. The femtoslider is not only considerably smaller, it is also significantly lighter than a "normal" picoslider. However, less volume means that less power is needed to move the slider back and forth across the disks. This, in turn, results in lower energy use by the hard drive. For another thing, Hitachi uses a very effective, adaptive power-saving mechanism - the A.B.L.E. (=adaptive battery life extender).

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Belive what you want, but facts are facts.