leopard and battery issues

[Finlandboy]

so i decided to buy leopard and install it on my older powerbook g4, thinking it would just be a little slower than with tiger, which i was ok with,

after using leopard for a day everything seemed to be ok, then while i was surfing the web (safari was the only app open) with a 100% charged battery and after just unplugging it from the charger it dies and goes into sleep mode with the battery at around 80% still charged, i plugged it into the charger and it started up with 0% battery power,

now i know the computer will go into sleep mode if the battery gets to low, and with tiger installed and only surfing the web i could go to 40% then it would sleep,

over the past few days i tested the the battery life and it always dies around 70-80%

so my question is has anyone with a older battery had these problems while using leopard, i know my battery doesn't have much left to give but it should last longer than what it is doing right now, and if so what have you done to improve the battery life

thanx

 

[touchmanic]

Yeah, the same thing happened to me today when surfing on Safari. I dunno....did you do a complete installation (erase and install) from tiger? I did so was thinking that perhaps the new installation means we need to reinstall the battery update again for our powerbook g4? I remember that this update was released a while ago... Anyway, after my laptop went dead i just navigated to the Apple site and reinstalled the battery update for 15" Powerbooks. Nothing else (touch wood) seems to have happened so far....could be coincidence though!

 

[Finlandboy]

yah i erased then reinstalled leopard, but what battery update are you talkin about, i'll look but if you can give a web address that would be great,

and i think my problems getting worse, now all of a sudden when i turn my computer off with full battery charge it drains its self and when i start it up it instantly goes to sleep, so i plug the charger back in and it starts with 0% battery again,

if this update thing doesn't work then i guess i'll have to reinstall tiger , or get a new battery,

 

[t-diddy]

20 Minute battery

Have had exactly this experience, but I use Flock, not Safari. I do not seem to be able to run for more than about 20 minutes without mains power and although last reported status is 70-80%, as soon as I plug in we're into an hours wait as it appears to reload from 0%. The upshot is I'm no longer portable!

Have tried a suggested PRAM and PMU reset and have deleted com.apple.PowerManagement.plist and now am waiting to see what happens.

I am also finding my fan is on far more than with Tiger

It's all looking a bit Vista..... :-(

 

[t-diddy]

20 Minute battery - more

and by the way, my battery is a spare I bought 2 years ago and only put into PBG4 when the original battery when dodgy after Leopard install..... so it's virtually unused. I had no such problems with Tiger. At £89 for a battery in UK, this is no joke!

 

[heatmiser]

This is why you shouldn't upgrade for the sake of upgrading. Nothing was wrong with your Powerbook on Tiger. Why did you decide to "fix" a working machine with Leopard? It's a buggy operating system that's been giving lots of people loads of trouble. I don't see how Mac fans can mock Windows users for their problems with Vista yet fail to see how the same phenomenon ("upgrading" from a stable OS to a buggy one) is just as present in Leopard.

 

[t-diddy]

I upgrade to get functionality and it's part of my job to keep track. When I installed, none of the current threads had developed and the only inside indicators were that you need more memory. I would expect a performance penalty on an older platform, but to loose 80% battery is not expected. The argument actually goes "Apple should QA their OS". Or they should product limit their OS. I'm well pleased with my newly out of the box iMac 24 with Spots pre-installed (once I got past the .0 release and upgraded to .1)