How long should the Battery in my laptop last?

[CougarDLB]

I have noticed that my battery was able to get 3:30 (max time) out of my G4 Powerbook 15' titanium with backlit keyboard. That is with only Word open and the screen monitor down to low as it can go before off. Now I am only getting 2:00 out of it. I have had the battery and the computer since October. Should that battery life go down that way that fast?

 

[janey]

are you sure that's all you have running

That's really weird dthough. But i think you have some background process running that might be using up battery power.

If not get a new battery from AppleCare

 

[jxyama]

1) did you calibrate your battery?

2) are you using Airport? BT? any external devices?

3) what is your energy saver setting? are you running at highest CPU on battery?

4) how much RAM do you have?

 

[CougarDLB]

Well to that last person that replied, I have not changed my settings from when I was getting 3+ hours and now I am get an hour less.

 

[crazzyeddie]

First of all, if it has a backlit keyboard, then its an Aluminum Powerbook, not a Titanium. Next, Word does use quite a bit of CPU power for a word processing app. On battery power (reduced CPU) this might be 20% while typing. Using airport will reduce your battery life, so will bluetooth (even if youre not using them... the only way to stop them from using power is to turn them off). 2:00 is a little low if youre using reduced CPU power a lowest screen brightness, though. With the same setup, using Word, Safari, iChat and IRC i get 3:30+ on my Titanium Powerbook.

 

[CougarDLB]

I using all those except IRC I dont know, I will have to look into it

 

[abhishekit]

ther was a thread sometime back telling how to know the condition of the battery from a terminal command, originally appeared in macworld. So you may find it useful..
cheers

edit: here it is

 

[jxyama]

Originally posted by CougarDLB
Well to that last person that replied, I have not changed my settings from when I was getting 3+ hours and now I am get an hour less.

battery should be calibrated every few months. so do that and see how the battery is after that...

 

[stoid]

I just got my 15 inch back in September a few days after the release. I've always suspected that something was wrong with my battery. I did the ioreg -l | grep -i IOBatteryInfo thing and it says 3730!!! The article says the the max possible is 4600, so mine is about 20% short! Does anyone else's battery come up this short for a 'new' battery?!? Should I call Apple and get a replacement battery/how do I convince them to replace it??

 

[CougarDLB]

If you have Apple care then they should replace it without any problems. If you dont then you are going to have to buy a new battery, so hopefully you have an apple care support program.