11.6 inch: Poor Battery Life.

[GGJstudios]

Quite mature! Just what I expected.

 

[halledise]

It's not about being "picky". It's about being accurate and factual. Simply draining and recharging the battery is NOT calibrating.

That isn't the correct procedure, either. Rather than make up your own steps and mislead people, just follow Apple's procedure for calibrating (which also applies to the current built-in batteries... not just "old-school" batteries), as listed in the link I posted. There are already too many people who misunderstand the procedure, without people posting wrong info.

here you go 'sir' - just to refute your picky claims of making up my own steps to mislead people - this direct from Apple's website:

PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD), MacBook (all models), MacBook Pro (all models), MacBook Pro (17-inch) (all models) and MacBook Air
The battery calibration for the PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD) and any model of MacBook or MacBook Pro has been updated because of a new battery released with this computer. With these computers, follow these steps to calibrate your battery:

1. Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your battery until the light ring or LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.
2. Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours. You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.
3. Disconnect the power adapter while the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, the low battery warning dialog appears on the screen.
4. At this point, save your work. Continue to use your computer; when the battery gets very low, the computer will automatically go to sleep.
5. Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.
6. Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.

check your own facts first sunshine, before patronising others

 

[GGJstudios]

here you go 'sir' - just to refute your picky claims of making up my own steps to mislead people

You've proven my point exactly!

this direct from Apple's website:
1. Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your battery until the light ring or LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.
2. Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours. You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.
3. Disconnect the power adapter while the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, the low battery warning dialog appears on the screen.
4. At this point, save your work. Continue to use your computer; when the battery gets very low, the computer will automatically go to sleep.
5. Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.
6. Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.
This older article leaves out the current information:
You can use your computer during this time.

That is basically the correct procedure, as shown in the link I posted, except you quoted from an older article that doesn't include all the information that appears in the newer article. Those steps differ greatly from the procedure you posted:

#1 calibrate battery. = full discharge (to sleep) then full charge.

You left out most of the meaningful steps.

perhaps I should've added>
• then allow to sleep over night

It says nothing about overnight; only 5 hours or more.

• when the morning comes, upon reconnecting power cable, wake the sucker up then turn it off, then allow to charge uninterrupted for at least 8 hours before restarting and once more using normally.

This is completely false. See the bold text in step #6 in the above procedure.

check your own facts first sunshine, before patronising others

You might try learning some facts, before you mislead others with wrong information.

 

[wirelessmacuser]

Having followed Apples battery maintenance / calibration protocol precisely, I'm getting excellent battery run times. I'd quote what I'm getting but it would be challenged by those who are here to argue. Suffice to say, that if you are unhappy with yours, I seriously doubt there's another laptop that would please you. Apple has done a superb job with this model...

 

[mrmister]

I use CoolBook, and it increases my battery runtime by more than an hour.

 

[tim100]

i installed flash on my mba and have noticed much worse battery life even when not surfing web with flash.

 

[GGJstudios]

i installed flash on my mba and have noticed much worse battery life even when not surfing web with flash.

Simply having flash installed doesn't put a demand on system resources or power. Only when flash is playing does it drain a battery faster.

 

[tim100]

Simply having flash installed doesn't put a demand on system resources or power. Only when flash is playing does it drain a battery faster.

check out this link
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/11/04/having-flash-installed-on-your-macbook-can-reduce-battery-runtim/

 

[GGJstudios]

check out this link
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/11/04/having-flash-installed-on-your-macbook-can-reduce-battery-runtim/

From that article:

Besides uninstalling Flash completely from your machine, there are a number of Safari extensions that allow you to disable or enable Flash with a click.

You can disable it without uninstalling it and get the same effect.

 

[tim100]

From that article:

You can disable it without uninstalling it and get the same effect.

how can you do that?

 

[GGJstudios]

how can you do that?

Did you click the link in the article?

 

[Mac_Max]

Anyways... back on topic...

One thing no one has asked is what resolution is the AVI you're playing? Also what encoding is it? In my experience anything above DVD resolution will tend to drain batteries seemingly disproportionately. Also some formats encapsulated by the AVI file (remember that AVI is a container and not a format) can cause CPU usage to increase.

3.3 hours is pretty good for video. I remember getting 6 hours while taking notes on my iBook G3 by setting the brightness to minimum (worked fine in dimly lit auditoriums where I had a couple classes in college), 3 hours doing real surfing and maybe 3 hours with a DVD playing.... all with the brightness pretty low. Increasing the brightness to 3 from max would cut battery life by at least an hour and MPEG4 video kinda sucked the life away as well.

Just my 2¢.