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Intel Core Duo battery life drained by USB devices

simie

simie

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 26, 2004
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http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29326

A REPORT claimed that plugging in any old USB 2.0 device will sap a notebook using Intel's Core Duo by over one hour of battery life.
According to TG Daily, Intel is blaming the problem on a bug in a Microsoft driver.

But that's debatable - according to the site. It claims that the Napa chipset is the real problem, and quotes a number of unnamed notebook manufacturers saying the 945GM chipset is the real botheration.

This would mean, for example, that if you plugged in the famous USB duck device, you would be unlikely to get the four or five hours of battery life you might have expected. Intel was unavailable for comment at the time of quacking.

Are the new MacBook Pro's affected by this ?
Are all variations of the 945 chipset affected?
 
robbieduncan said:
This appears to be a driver problem in Windows XP only at this point of time. OSX is not reported to be effected yet.
Click to expand...

Intel's theory will certainly be validated or invalidated by the MBP, if this is not resolved by then! I wonder whether the device needs to actually use USB2, since it is called out specifically? Would this happen even if you used a USB mouse? People who use mice with wires are crazy, but they still don't deserve that. :(
 
Will a USB 2 device sap a notebook's battery life by an hour, or will an extra hour's worth of power be stored in the battery, unused? I'm sure it's the latter, but the story doesn't provide any details whatsoever, so lets just wait for the MBPs before us Mac users act like boogers about this.
 
This is old news, and there were already threads/discussions on it here at MacRumors 2-3 weeks ago. Just do a search and you'll find them.

Nothing more to see here people, move along... :p ;) :cool:
 
twoodcc said:
why am i not suprized that it's just a windows xp problem?
Click to expand...


well they blame it on drivers ifor XP but at the same time they are the ones who are responible for designing the Drivers and they are different for each OS. M$ does have a valid point in point it back at intel for fixing it. Intel designed the boards and are the ones who are responible for the drivers. M$ drivers are general drivers and are designed to get the computer up and running. After that the drivers designed for rest of the hardware needs to be taken care of. Now M$ will put those drivers on windows update but it needs the drivers to put there first, which is intels job.

That or part of the problem could trace down to the MOBO them selves and issue dealling with BIOS over EFI that apple users. A windows computer can not go to full sleep mode and still be waked up by a USB device and the issue deals with the BIOS over firmware. USB requires the CPU to be used. Com ports I/O and PS/2 ports do not require any cpu power to be used. It a limitation of the BIOS no the OS itself. I hope with EFI that windows is switching over 2 will allow those computer to do the full sleep as well.
 
~Shard~ said:
This is old news, and there were already threads/discussions on it here at MacRumors 2-3 weeks ago. Just do a search and you'll find them.
Click to expand...
Which is why I posted the new information (i.e. affects older CPUs, not chipset dependent) in a two week old thread, rather than creating a new one. I thought it was interesting in a general sort of way, not "OMG, teh duel cors are cr@P!!"
 
plinden said:
Which is why I posted the new information (i.e. affects older CPUs, not chipset dependent) in a two week old thread, rather than creating a new one. I thought it was interesting in a general sort of way, not "OMG, teh duel cors are cr@P!!"
Click to expand...

Gotcha - makes sense. :)
 
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