[PB] Battery endurance (was: Test)

[Richard McKay]

On 29/6/05 20:32, "Mike Hernandez" <sequethin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 6/29/05, Murray Kastner <murrayka at mac.com> wrote:
>> How long does the battery in your PB last? And which PB do you have?
>> And, lastly, I would like to know if there is any advantage to buying
>> an extra battery and alternating them?
>> 
> 
> I got my pb about a month or 2 ago, it's 15" 1.67Ghz, 1GB RAM,
> 128MB/dual-head video, etc.

Nice PB! We have a 12" 1.5 and a 17" 1.33 with 1.5 GB RAM which we alternate
using with our 20" Apple Display. After a year with the 17" I tend to get
anywhere from 1.5 hours (DVD, streaming wireless radio, full brightness) to
near 4 hours when taking energy measures underway.

> I did calibrate my battery (found that  in the manual while looking
> for the answer to my 'how did I manage to get my keyboard to light up
> like that?' question haha) and I turn off my airport and bluetooth
> unless I need them, which isn't so often. I get about 3.5 hours of
> battery life if I just listen to bassdrive.com [boh! ;)] and surf the
> net, use neo office, etc.

When you say you calibrated your battery what do you mean? I haven't seen
any tool for this (GUI anyway) and would be interested. Curious why you
wouldn't be using the wireless connection to be online though...one of the
best reasons to have a Book instead of a laptop IMO.

> The battery life is shortened by about an hour if I decide to mess
> around with blender, or when I tell fink to try compiling some linux
> app that I miss.
> 
> I was really glad when I realized that I could turn my airport and
> bluetooth off, because 2 hours of battery just didn't seem right at
> all...  I don't foresee myself going somewhere that I couldn't charge
> my battery any time soon, so I haven't considered getting an extra
> battery.

You can also lengthen the battery time by reducing the screen brightness to
just what you need at the time instead of always on full, also you can turn
of the backlit keyboard to help somewhat. Finally you can ensure that you
try to read from memory first then from HD and at least when underway never
from CD/DVD (copy them to HD) if possible.

I used to have a second battery for a previous Book and hardly ever used it
(besides flying I was hardly ever more than 3.5 hours away from a power
source) so that in the end it really wasn't that smart a purchase. With the
new PB I expect that I will be able to last at least 2 years until I will
most likely upgrade again anyway.

> Glad to see some activity here!

Ditto.

Cheers,

Richard
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