What's up with this battery life?

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Earlier today my girlfriend wanted to charge her Powerbook over at my place, so I handed her my charger cord and she plugged it in. I used my Powerbook for about an hour on battery. Then she wanted to watch a movie, so I put it to sleep and we went to the rental store and got a movie. I used my Powerbook during most of the movie, which was two hours long, on battery. I come back into my room, and thus far I have been using it another hour and a half...coming up on 2 hours. That's 5 1/2 hours so far! I'm TRYING to get the battery to die, so that I can fully recharge it again, per the manual's instructions, but the darn thing just keeps on going! I fired up two movies in Quicktime and turned on wireless AND bluetooth just to speed up the draining process.

Anybody else getting absurdly long battery lives out of their new Powerbooks?

Woot! It says 11 minutes left...I can almost go to bed now.
 
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Osiris22x
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Woot!

15 minutes have gone by, and it's been saying "1 minute left" for 5 minutes! LOL

I love this little Powerbook. :)
 
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Joeytpg

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but you can't put it to charge if the battery isn't dead yet?.......i mean.......i thought this was only when you buy it........i've read over here that when you buy a powebook/ibook the fist time i use it i had to let the battery dry before charging it the firt time right??

but is this ALWAYS? or is your powerbook new too??

i'm confused
 
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its just good to drain the battery every once and a while before doing a full charge to help calibrate it
 
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PowerbookG417

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there is no need to allow the battery to completly wear down for normal charges only about once a month should you perform the PMU reset. Im currently dealing with a bumm battery and i sometimes get the opposite 5-9 hours to charge. but if i let it charge for 20 mins like that..hot plug the battery twice and restart i then get a full battery...but go figure
 
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Li-Ion Batteries have no Memory effects, so you can pretty much charge it if and when you want to. You don't need to wait till it's drained. An average battery have a life of 1-3 years depending on how your PowerBook is used. If your like me, then you'll probably get a new Battery every 18 months, since it's used everyday and charged twice... it's getting serious abuse.
 
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To answer somebody's question, yes, I'm doing this because I have a brand new Powerbook. The Powerbook manual specifically states to do this within the first couple of weeks of ownership, to "initialize" the battery.

And while I would be inclined to agree with hype.it that normally a Lithium Ion battery doesn't need such treatment, Apple was very firm in that it needed to be done for one reason or another, so I did it.

At any rate, I'm very happy to see that my Powerbook has an absurdly long battery life!
 
E

.emo.

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Osiris22x said:
Earlier today my girlfriend wanted to charge her Powerbook over at my place, so I handed her my charger cord and she plugged it in. I used my Powerbook for about an hour on battery. Then she wanted to watch a movie, so I put it to sleep and we went to the rental store and got a movie. I used my Powerbook during most of the movie, which was two hours long, on battery. I come back into my room, and thus far I have been using it another hour and a half...coming up on 2 hours. That's 5 1/2 hours so far! I'm TRYING to get the battery to die, so that I can fully recharge it again, per the manual's instructions, but the darn thing just keeps on going! I fired up two movies in Quicktime and turned on wireless AND bluetooth just to speed up the draining process.

Anybody else getting absurdly long battery lives out of their new Powerbooks?

Woot! It says 11 minutes left...I can almost go to bed now.

well mine usually lasts for 2 hours even when i put it on longest battery life :/
 
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TylerMoney

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You definelty want to do it at least once...it's said to be bad to do it more than that...for lithion ion batteries anywho.

I get somewhere between 2 1/2 to 4 1/2 hrs of charged dpending on what I'm doing.
 
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Don't forget to turn off your Airport and Bluetooth if you are not using them. Both are transceivers and use power to look for networks or bluetooth objects to attach to. Turn them off and you can add an hour to your battery.
 
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I always have my airport off, and my bluetooth off. And I still can't over 2 hours. Maybe 1 hour and 45 minutes.. but that's max. Maybe I need to get another battery or something. I wish I could get 5 and half hours.. that would be mad crazy awesome. But I can't, so it's a big burn out. :(
 
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MacHat

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I just got mine 2 days ago and didn't drain it... is it too late? I'll drain it right now and do a full charge.
 
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No worries

MacHat said:
I just got mine 2 days ago and didn't drain it... is it too late? I'll drain it right now and do a full charge.

MacHat,

You're fine, the Powerbook Manual (it's amazing how you people don't read the manual :rolleyes: ) says to just make sure you do it once within the first week or two of ownership.

So...do it whenever you get time, and it'll be fine.
 
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EYPUFF said:
I always have my airport off, and my bluetooth off. And I still can't over 2 hours. Maybe 1 hour and 45 minutes.. but that's max. Maybe I need to get another battery or something. I wish I could get 5 and half hours.. that would be mad crazy awesome. But I can't, so it's a big burn out. :(

EYPUFF,

Go into your Energy Saver settings and use the custom setting, don't use the default as it's not very good. For battery settings I use the following, and get AMAZING battery life out of my Powerbook.

Put computer to sleep after: 10 minutes
Put display to sleep after: 3 mintes (dim at 1.5 minutes)
Put hard disk to sleep when possible
Processor Performance: Reduced
Wireless: Off
Bluetooth: Off

BTW, I also recommend leaving processor performance on "automatic" when plugged in, instead of "Highest" as it will produce much less heat when doing simple stuff like browsing the internet or checking your email.
 
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Osiris22x said:
EYPUFF,

Go into your Energy Saver settings and use the custom setting, don't use the default as it's not very good. For battery settings I use the following, and get AMAZING battery life out of my Powerbook.

Put computer to sleep after: 10 minutes
Put display to sleep after: 3 mintes (dim at 1.5 minutes)
Put hard disk to sleep when possible
Processor Performance: Reduced
Wireless: Off
Bluetooth: Off

BTW, I also recommend leaving processor performance on "automatic" when plugged in, instead of "Highest" as it will produce much less heat when doing simple stuff like browsing the internet or checking your email.
Even w/ the above mentioned settings, it says i will only have 1:30 minutes... and it is draining like none other. well i guess that's why i won't be using my computer on the road much. :)

EY
 
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EYPUFF said:
Even w/ the above mentioned settings, it says i will only have 1:30 minutes... and it is draining like none other. well i guess that's why i won't be using my computer on the road much. :)

EY

If you're getting THAT poor of battery life out of your Powerbook, and it's less than a year old, I'd run down to the nearest Apple store and get a free replacement battery ASAP.

What's the point of a laptop if you can't use it away from a wall outlet?
 
X

xr600

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hmmm...

EYPUFF said:
Even w/ the above mentioned settings, it says i will only have 1:30 minutes... and it is draining like none other. well i guess that's why i won't be using my computer on the road much. :)

EY

Is this really true ??... I'm seriously considering swapping my 12" ibook for a PB, but if it only holds up fo <2 hours there's no way I'm doing it !! ...

Torben.
 
S

Sundance

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i get a little over 5 hours for just surfing the net (that means the airport is on) and typing word processor and stuff.

the battery life is excellent.
 
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Osiris22x
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xr600 said:
Is this really true ??... I'm seriously considering swapping my 12" ibook for a PB, but if it only holds up fo <2 hours there's no way I'm doing it !! ...

Torben.

Absolutely NOT. He's just got a bad battery and hasn't exchanged it for some odd reason. I can generally get 4 to 5 hours out of my Powerbook and I rarely have to run it completely dead, because it just keeps on going.
 
L

lzasitko

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battery info

Eypuff;

How old is the battery?

Try this. Go to Terminal in Applications > Utilities and type
"ioreg -l | grep -i IOBatteryInfo" without quotes the one to look at is capacity a new battery is 4000 or more. Before you do this unhook if from the power and restart the computer. It will give you an idea of how good it is.
 

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