Panther, Older G4 Powerbooks and battery life

Ok, I just upgraded to Panther after a year with Jaguar. Suddenly my battery is draining super-fast. it's like every few seconds a percentage goes down (this is with the airport and safari running, I won't risk running Photoshop without the plug). Is this other people have noticed? I don't think it's my battery all of a sudden, but I've had this laptop for 2 years now, and I've never really had to worry too much about battery life the way I suddenly have to now. Case in point, I put the laptop to sleep and a few hours later, at least 20% battery has died off. What groks? Any help anyone could offer would be awesome. thanks.

I looked at the Apple site and found this:

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3

The above links made be the same.

i havent noticed a thing

It looks like I have the same setup as you and believe me.. I started getting.. if I was lucky an hours worth of battery.. so I did a bunch of tests and it was having airport on. If I turn airport off.. I get my normal almost three hours.. As long as I take battery preservation steps.

I am experiencing the same thing, both on my Lombard and on my girlfriend's iBook Dual 500 Mhz. Yeah, my battery is 4 years old, but I was still able to get an hour under Jaguar. Since upgrading to Panther my battery life has gone down to 10 minutes. When I unplug I get the battery warning message after about a minute. Charging seems to take forever, too. The iBook is not much better. I tried turning off AirPort and that made no difference.

today is really my first day of actually testing my powerbook with panther. ive got airport on and i have been on for over 2 hours and it still says 1:40 left

G4 Battery Life with Panther S*cks

cmputercat said:

Ok, I just upgraded to Panther after a year with Jaguar. Suddenly my battery is draining super-fast. it's like every few seconds a percentage goes down (this is with the airport and safari running, I won't risk running Photoshop without the plug). Is this other people have noticed? I don't think it's my battery all of a sudden, but I've had this laptop for 2 years now, and I've never really had to worry too much about battery life the way I suddenly have to now. Case in point, I put the laptop to sleep and a few hours later, at least 20% battery has died off. What groks? Any help anyone could offer would be awesome. thanks.

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I am shocked at how much my battery life has dropped since going to Panther! I'm lucky to get an hour on either of my batteries, which routinely gave me 4 hours+ on Jaguar. I use Airport almost constantly, so turning it off is not really an option, though I do keep the display dimmed by 4 clicks. Battery drain while sleeping is also MUCH worse--overnight I go from 100% to near zero in 12 hours or so.

What could they break in an OS to make bettery life drop so precipitously? I have to by a couple more batteries to get close to the life I had in ONE battery under Jaguar,

Any hints or any hope?

Baze in Austin

G4-500mhz, 1GB, Panther 10.3.2 (Build 7D24)

Have you guys downloaded the battery update?

I hear that's supposed to correct some of the battery problems associated with Panther.