Battery life/processor usage.

[jadekitty24]

I own a Powerbook G4 1.5 ghz running 10.4.5. I have always had my processor usage set to "highest". Lately my usage has been pretty light, generally Folding is always running, Camino, sometimes Stickies/iTunes/Text edit. This morning, after my PB was charging all night, I had Finder, Camino, Folding and Stickies open. I was reading MR for all of 1 hour and 10 minutes when the "you are now using reserve power" or whatever came on. Is what I'm doing that "heavy"? Would just these apps suck down the battery that quick or is it safe to say my battery needs replacing? By the way, I HAD the processor on highest, the screen brightness on the very lowest setting, bluetooth off, airport on. It wasn't hooked up to anything external that may suck the juice out of it. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

[TLRedhawke]

Folding is your primary problem here. The nature of Folding@Home, SETI, etc. is that they utilize unused processing power. That is, no matter how much or little processor power you're using, Folding will use the rest that is available. So, in effect, even though you're only running some low processor applications otherwise, your PowerBook is running at a constant full load. That would drain anyone's battery pretty quickly. The simple solution is to turn off Folding when you're using battery power.

 

[mad jew]

Or turn the processor speed down so that Folding doesn't have access to as much heat-inducing and battery-sapping CPU cycles. As TLRedhawke, says, Folding will have effectively been using your PowerBook at maximum performance. Of course, turning off Folding will give you an even longer battery life.

 

[jadekitty24]

Ok, thanks guys! I'm glad that my battery isn't borked. And as you can tell I'm not so hot in the common sense department...that was something I should have figured out for myself

 

[bthom70]

I had to put my Folding on hiatus. (still runs on my other 5 XP machines)
My Rev E PB 15.2" 1.67 get very hot very quickly even running on the power cord when Folding. The fan becomes the "playing card in the bike spokes" sound. Enough to drive me crazy.
How do you put up with the fan while folding?

 

[jadekitty24]

For me the fan doesn't always kick on, usually when my PB is folding the only other thing I'm doing is web surfing. I have since lowered my processor usage to "reduced" and now the fan barely ever comes on. I'm just going to finish up this WU and then I'll leave the folding to the PC's of the house.