i have a 14" ibook g4 (latest rev) but i can't seem to get the fantastic 4 hours of battery life everyone raves about. i always have it on battery saver but it still doesn't work. what gives? 
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how do you guys get good battery life out of your 'books?
- Thread starter MUCKYFINGERS
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Well I'm on an iBook G4 right now (friends brand new machine), and to conserve battery life I generally set processor power to "better battery life" and turn the display brightness down.
You will need to know that overtime the iBooks battery capacity drops dramatically however.
You will need to know that overtime the iBooks battery capacity drops dramatically however.
mad jew said:MUCKYFINGERS, what are you using it for?
itunes, safari, word, excel, terminal, ichat/adium, maybe some quicktime here and there and that's about it.
Okay, well my original G4 iBook gets four hours plus with the screen set to default brightness (just below full on battery settings), volume at 50% and AirPort turned on. I make sure I calibrate it once a month but other than that, I don't do anything special to get good times.
1. Set to "Better Energy Savings"
2. Turn brightness down as far as I can handle it
3. Turn off the sound card (ie: mute)
4. Turn off Bluetooth
5. Have screen calibrated correctly
6. Calibrate battery every other month
Doing this ensures I get about 4.5 hours of battery life on my 12" Rev D Powerbook.
2. Turn brightness down as far as I can handle it
3. Turn off the sound card (ie: mute)
4. Turn off Bluetooth
5. Have screen calibrated correctly
6. Calibrate battery every other month
Doing this ensures I get about 4.5 hours of battery life on my 12" Rev D Powerbook.
1. Turn Airport on only when I need it for something; leave it off the rest of the time
2. Dim the screen to about 2/3 normal
Doing just those two things, I get about 6 hours of life out of every full battery charge. Airport is the biggest one. Having that on constantly really cuts the battery (this is true of any laptop wireless card). Just popping online when you need something, and then shutting the card down again will save you TONS of battery life.
2. Dim the screen to about 2/3 normal
Doing just those two things, I get about 6 hours of life out of every full battery charge. Airport is the biggest one. Having that on constantly really cuts the battery (this is true of any laptop wireless card). Just popping online when you need something, and then shutting the card down again will save you TONS of battery life.
I usually set screen brightness on my iBook to a little less than half, make sure Bluetooth is off, and also turn of Airport if it's not necessary. With Airport off, I can get nearly 6 hours of battery life, and with Airport, around 4. Just turning your screen brightness down to as low as you can while still being able to use your iBook comfortably considerably increases battery life.
A huge, huge factor in increasing battery life is turning screen brightness down to about 60%. you'll get a huge chunk of time you wouldnt have otherwise
brightness all the way down when unplugged.
Only 2 programs running at once. very rarely go to widgets, and barely ever use expose.
also never searching the computer for things so i don't have to make the HD spin up often.
have monitor shut off after 2 minutes of inactivity
Only 2 programs running at once. very rarely go to widgets, and barely ever use expose.
also never searching the computer for things so i don't have to make the HD spin up often.
have monitor shut off after 2 minutes of inactivity
MUCKYFINGERS said:i have a 14" ibook g4 (latest rev) but i can't seem to get the fantastic 4 hours of battery life everyone raves about. i always have it on battery saver but it still doesn't work. what gives?
Significant users of power in a laptop (in rough order of significance):
- LCD backlight -- keep the screen brightness turned down as much as you can handle,
- CPU frequency -- turn down frequency to "energy saving" settings,
- Hard Drive spinning -- avoid searching the hard drive, loading new programs, loading/saving data as much as possible,
- Optical drive -- eject that CD/DVD if you are not using it,
- Wireless networking (bluetooth and airport/802.11) -- turn it off if you don't need it,
- USB and Firewire devices that do not have their own power supply.
Of course, all of this is a trade off. You should easily get 4 hours of battery life if you turn down the screen brightness, turn off wireless networking, and only spend 4+ hours typing into TextEdit without saving.
A more common mix of activities will decrease battery life. For example, if you have iTunes playing mp3's constantly then your hard drive will always be spinning since it only spins down by default after 10 minutes of no drive activity. If you are surfing the web then you probably have airport turned on and will also have the drive spinning since web browsers cache the pages you load locally on the hard drive.
If you really want to extend your battery life then you need to think about what parts of the laptop is being used by the software you run.
Does anyone know if Apple's switch to LiPo batteries in the MBP will affect battery life (make it better)?
i put my laptop on mute and dimmed the brightness to all but the very last setting for "dimness" (if that is even a word, lol), and i easily got 4.5 hours of battery life. thanks for all your help everyone. this included surfing the web and using ms office to finish a report on herbivory and predation for my botany class...
Turn the brightness almost all the way down...typically 2 bars (bright enough for me, but I have pretty good eyes)
Turn off Bluetooth
Turn off Airport when not using it
I can usually get 3.5-4 hours out of my PowerBook when doing all of the above
Turn off Bluetooth
Turn off Airport when not using it
I can usually get 3.5-4 hours out of my PowerBook when doing all of the above
The amount of RAM installed had made a huge impact on battery life for me. It's the stuff that cooks my lap when doing intensive work so I can see why. Unfortunately it's not easy to change this! It would be good if there was a panel to shut half of it off when you liked.
The other thing you could do is get yourself a spare battery, especially if after all of these settings/adjustments, the time you get out of the PC is only just enough. As the battery gets older, this will become just not enough!
The other thing you could do is get yourself a spare battery, especially if after all of these settings/adjustments, the time you get out of the PC is only just enough. As the battery gets older, this will become just not enough!
Mass Hysteria said:
I would think more RAM=more battery life. Since the more RAM you have, the less the HD will need to be accessed for virtual memory.