MacBook Pro questions

[maverick808]

I've ordered a MacBook Pro but I still had a few questions so I called Apple and asked. Here they are in case anyone is interested...

Q) How does the battery life to compare to the latest PowerBooks?
A) The battery lasts on average 5.5 hours. It definitely lasts substantially longer than the current PowerBooks.

Q) After running a PowerBook and a MacBook under full CPU load for 20 minutes which would be hotter?
A) Although the MacBook still gets hot it does run slightly cooler than a PowerBook

Q) How loud are the MacBook fans? Are they louder than a PowerBooks at full speed?
A) The guy didn't know. I asked if he could find out and he basically said no-one there had been given that information yet.

I called the UK Apple line so if anyone in the USA wants to call and ask the last question to see if they know I'd be really interested to know the answer to that one. Thanks.

 

[godbout]

It is interesting that they said that the battery life was significantly longer because Jobs said in an interview recently that the battery life was about the same as the current powerbooks... If it was significantly longer you would have thought that apple display it somewhere...

 

[maverick808]

It is interesting that they said that the battery life was significantly longer because Jobs said in an interview recently that the battery life was about the same as the current powerbooks... If it was significantly longer you would have thought that apple display it somewhere...

Well that's what I was told but it might not be true. To be honest I get the feeling that they don't really know themselves. Although at the start of the call I said I just wanted questions answered, after every thing I asked he kept saying "so do you want to place an order?" and even though I kept answering no he still would ask again and again.

That said, even if the battery life was a vast improvement Apple still wouldn't mention it on their site until they had exact tried and tested figures about exactly how long it lasts. They might know it's much better but be still testing to get a specific number to state.

 

[sw1tcher]

It is interesting that they said that the battery life was significantly longer because Jobs said in an interview recently that the battery life was about the same as the current powerbooks... If it was significantly longer you would have thought that apple display it somewhere...

The battery life hasn't been officially announced because these are new lithium-polymer batteries. The manufacturers and Apple are probably still working on them and trying to optimize them to give the best life possible.

We'll know once the MBP's start shipping in mid-Feb.

 

[geekologist]

I've ordered a MacBook Pro but I still had a few questions so I called Apple and asked. Here they are in case anyone is interested...

Q) How does the battery life to compare to the latest PowerBooks?
A) The battery lasts on average 5.5 hours. It definitely lasts substantially longer than the current PowerBooks.

Q) After running a PowerBook and a MacBook under full CPU load for 20 minutes which would be hotter?
A) Although the MacBook still gets hot it does run slightly cooler than a PowerBook

Q) How loud are the MacBook fans? Are they louder than a PowerBooks at full speed?
A) The guy didn't know. I asked if he could find out and he basically said no-one there had been given that information yet.

I called the UK Apple line so if anyone in the USA wants to call and ask the last question to see if they know I'd be really interested to know the answer to that one. Thanks.

OMG!! They actually told you about battery life. I went to two different Apple stores and none of the employies would comment. One hinted that it would be the same as the old Powerbook. I hope this is a real estimate from Apple. They always over estimate though.

 

[maverick808]

OMG!! They actually told you about battery life. I went to two different Apple stores and none of the employies would comment. One hinted that it would be the same as the old Powerbook. I hope this is a real estimate from Apple. They always over estimate though.

Yes, and I called twice to make sure. The first time I just asked how long I could expect the battery to last and they immediately fired back "five and a half hours" like they had a script. The second time I asked for a comparison with the current PowerBooks and they said it will definitely last substantially longer.

 

[farazm]

Battery life

hey guys,

i just called apple. They guy qouted 6-7 hours. I was like what?? he said yeah. To make sure i said "thats significantly more than the powerbook" he replied with "Yeah, the powerbook was only 4-5 this is 6-7" He also noted that this was the estimate and that if apple are able to 'optimise' the battery more it could be longer. Estimated ship date somewhere between 10-20th of Feburary. About 4,000 orders in already.

Hope that helps you guys!

Faraz

 

[maverick808]

hey guys,

i just called apple. They guy qouted 6-7 hours. I was like what?? he said yeah. To make sure i said "thats significantly more than the powerbook" he replied with "Yeah, the powerbook was only 4-5 this is 6-7" He also noted that this was the estimate and that if apple are able to 'optimise' the battery more it could be longer. Estimated ship date somewhere between 10-20th of Feburary. About 4,000 orders in already.

Hope that helps you guys!

Faraz

Excellent, good to hear confirmation of the battery info because I was suspicious when they told me it was substantially longer.

Anyone ask about the fan noise yet?

By the way my MBP has a ship date of Feb 7th

 

[farazm]

Wireless

I was just wondering about what standards does the airport card support?

I read on a review somewhere that the new iMac supports .a, making it .a,.b and .g. Though on the apple websites it only states .g support.

Is there any chance the macbook will have .a support, anyone know anything?

faraz

 

[dblissmn]

I'm still a bit suspicious of these figures. Between the techie sites like Anandtech and Tom's Hardware, tests on the battery life on Core Duo Wintel systems have been all over the place; while the processor itself seems to be very efficient, some implementations of the chipset have apparently had issues; Tom's Hardware had a test on a high end Core Duo system running an unusual implementation of the Radeon X1600 (256MB dedicated VRAM, another 256MB dynamically shared) that was a total power hog, but they couldn't figure out whether it was the main logic board controller (the same as on the Macbook, by the way), the USB controller or the graphics chip. All they could figure out was that it definitely was't the processor. All the tests I've seen on Intel integrated graphics chipsets have been very impressive, though.

In any case, variations like these are probably why Apple have been officially holding their fire in terms of quoting real figures.

 

[nospleen]

hey guys,

i just called apple. They guy qouted 6-7 hours. I was like what?? he said yeah. To make sure i said "thats significantly more than the powerbook" he replied with "Yeah, the powerbook was only 4-5 this is 6-7" He also noted that this was the estimate and that if apple are able to 'optimise' the battery more it could be longer. Estimated ship date somewhere between 10-20th of Feburary. About 4,000 orders in already.

Hope that helps you guys!

Faraz

I thought they would have more orders than that. I think macrumors has at least 200 of those!!

 

[mdavey]

Q) How does the battery life to compare to the latest PowerBooks?
A) The battery lasts on average 5.5 hours. It definitely lasts substantially longer than the current PowerBooks.

Sounds like they still don't know. 5.5 hours is the official figure for the PowerBooks, so quoting at least 5.5 hours is consistent with SJ's quote about being in excess of the PowerBook.

Q) How loud are the MacBook fans? Are they louder than a PowerBooks at full speed?
A) The guy didn't know. I asked if he could find out and he basically said no-one there had been given that information yet.

Apple shoud quote an overall dB(A) for the PowerBook and then for the MacBook. It's not asif it is hard or expensive to accurately and reproducibly measure the value.

 

[wako]

Im going to go ahead and call the battery life COMPLETE bull crap...


On Tomshardware.com, they recently released a story about how the (current) Dual Core Duo CPU by Intel does conserve battery. In fact according to the story, it actually is worse NOT because of the CPU but because probably the GPU or the chipset.


Read the Story

Obviously before the nub sauces start flaming me because it doesnt talk or even run OSX in these tests, it doesnt matter because the hardware is the same practically. Type of CPU and Chipset.

 

[mdavey]

it doesnt matter because the hardware is the same practically. Type of CPU and Chipset.

It could be any component or combination of components. While the graphics chip, firewire chip, USB and northbridge/southbridge are likely candidates, the screen type of battery, battery recharge circuit and fans could all have a part to play. Heck, even faulty capacitors can lead to higher-than-expected power consumption.

 

[wako]

...please read the article....

 

[maverick808]

...please read the article....

I read it and the points about the screen and type of battery are still valid. The screen draws more power than any other component in the system so it's a massive factor.

Also, Apple are using a LiPo (Lithium Polymer) rather than a LION (Lithium-ion) battery. I've not seen one of these in any other laptops I've used yet and as the chemistry is different I suspect the battery has quite a different performance profile in every aspect.

EDIT: Checked the Acer Travelmate 8200 and it has a 90watt charger and a traditional LION battery. I think we really have to wait and see what the LiPo battery is like unless anyone knows of an existing PC laptop currently on the market that uses a LiPo?

 

[maverick808]

I was just wondering about what standards does the airport card support?

I read on a review somewhere that the new iMac supports .a, making it .a,.b and .g. Though on the apple websites it only states .g support.

Is there any chance the macbook will have .a support, anyone know anything?

faraz

I read that Jobs used an 802.11a network connection for the demo of the iSight in the MBP at the keynote so yes it supports 802.11a.

 

[mdavey]

I read that Jobs used an 802.11a network connection for the demo of the iSight in the MBP at the keynote so yes it supports 802.11a.

Yea, I read that two, but I'm not sure he was using standard drivers. I got the impression that Apple Engineers knocked up a 802.11a driver specifically for the demo and it won't necessarily be a part of (released) Mac OS X.

 

[ncoffey]

Yea, I read that two, but I'm not sure he was using standard drivers. I got the impression that Apple Engineers knocked up a 802.11a driver specifically for the demo and it won't necessarily be a part of (released) Mac OS X.

Time for someone to make some new wireless drivers.