[P1] Battery Observations

[Jack Rodgers]

On Sunday, March 2, 2003, at 03:15  AM, Per Brodersen wrote:

> I have my iBook (November 2001) for 14 months now and the battery is 
> losing
> quickly its power - on Mac OS X 10.2.3 without any hardware additions 
> (more
> RAM etc.), now I get only one hour of battery life according to the 
> battery
> display - although I can run some time on "0%".
> Have reset the Power Manager - obviously, to no avail.

The first step would be to open the Energy Saving cp/pref pane and make 
sure your battery settings are for conservation.

Turn off your Airport Card when not in use.

Remove any PC Cards.

The next step is more subtle and I first noticed that Quicken 2002 was 
slowing down my internet connections. In OX X open Process Viewer and 
begin studying the two % columns. Notice how some processes consume 80% 
or so of the cpu time on occassion. Such a high percentage is really 
hitting the battery, even if it is just for a short time.

CPU Monitor will display a transparent floating thermometer which will 
indicate how the processor is being used.

You might find it interesting to see how typing in mail causes a little 
rev of the engine and how opening an application really revs the cpu 
and even switching windows also is a big goose on the accelerator pedal.

In otherwords, how you use your Mac affects the time you get from a 
full charge. I can see the thermometer reving even as I do nothing on 
my Powerbook and just watch the thermometer so there is a lot of 
background activity going on.

The fewer applications you have open, the less the battery drain even 
if the savings is minimal. There are also those applications you have 
set to automatically update or check the network every so often for the 
time, etc that eat up the battery. iChat might be one.

I've just closed all open applications except mail and the thermometer 
activity has dropped significantly. Still there is activity and 
everyonce in a while the thermometer reading jumps to near max...  
Maybe this explains why my 5 hour battery only delivers two hours in OS 
X.

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Break the Rules! Use a Sprint PC Connection Card with a tiBook:
<http://www.powerpage.org/story.lasso?newsID=10220>

jackrodgers at earthlink.net
http://www.jackrodgers.com