I'm doing OS X wrong. Need some help.

Hello, folks.

Recently I've migrated to Apple. Bought the MBP 13". Previously only used PC's (Windows), blah blah blah blah. Story's so common it's bordering cliche now, so I'll drop it.

Basically, I'm getting around six and a half hours of use on OS X with 5 tabs open (none of which are flash-heavy), iTunes playing music in the background, and MMessenger up. Casual use. Now keep in mind I'm not really the picky type, however, this is quite a ways from Apple's claim of 10 hours (I know it's just marketing) and the usual seven and a half to eight and a half hours others claim under similar usage. An hour or so in itself however wouldn't be enough to irk me.

What DOES however, is that I get six hours and fifteen minutes in Windows 7 with the exact same usage (5 tabs up, iTunes, and Windows Live Messenger). Although I admit I've optimized the battery life in Windows 7 to be able to eek out that 6:15, it's right up OS X's alley. And that doesn't sit well with me. So obviously I'm doing something wrong here in OS X.

Here's a lists of any changes I've made as well as the settings:

-Brightness five notches below maximum
-Keyboard not back-lit
-Fan going at 3200 rpm
-Safari w/ 4-5 tags at a time without heavy flash
-iTunes
-Microsoft Messenger
-Bluetooth off

That's it. I've already calibrated my battery. Are there other settings available that can help snatch up an hour or two of battery life?

 

You're running at a hair under 70% brightness (Apple uses 50% for testing) and using extra power to keep the fans on at 3200rpm compared to 2000rpm which is using about an extra 30 power there as well. You mentioned you aren't using heavy flash but that implies that you are using some flash which may have an impact. Here are some reading material from Apple on how to maximize your battery.

 

10 hours would be on 50% brightness with fans at 2000 rpm browsing pages without flash.

8 1/2 hours are what users reported on 50% brightness casually browsing (which would most likely also half some flash) as well as iTunes and an instant messaging application running in the background. I will assume fans are going at 2000 rpm.

Two hours cut off because 20% increase in brightness and 60% increase in fans just doesn't seem right to me. Unless those fans soak up batteries, which I don't think they do.

EDIT: And honestly, I can't find anything useful on Apple's website at all.

 

what did you do to optimize Windows so well? other than obvious stuff like turning off search index? underclocking?

 

Under-volting is probably the biggest thing. Apple had the voltage of EVERY multiplier set at 1.15V (even for the lowest multiplier, which is 6X). Under-volting my C2D set the 6X multiplier voltage to 0.8750V. It's made a huge difference and cut down my temperatures from ~65 to 40 degrees Celsius.

Secondly, I turned off search index as you said, as well as disabling ~15 processes (total guesstimate). I also have a program called Tune-Up Utilities which helps disable some processes that aren't needed and focus on the one program I am currently using (whether it be Google Chrome or Microsoft Word). However, I'm not sure how much that helps.

 

"casual browsing" is subjective and can mean anything from no flash to over 50% flash. Its hard to accurately compare when you have those kind of variables. I'm just taking a shot in the dark by suggesting the flash and brightness. Have you used the energy saver preferences to change anything in OS X?

 

I brought up the energy saver preferences but... it seemed to me like it would help to preserving battery life while in use... This is because all I see is two sliders that set the time for when the display should sleep or when the laptop should sleep.

Unless I'm doing it wrong and there are other options as well.

 

There is the option to put the hard disk to sleep when possible. Also make sure you turn off the display setting that automatically adjust the screen brightness.

 

does this machine have an integrated graphics card? are you using it on the os x side?

 

Yes for both...

 

My battery keeps degenerating for some reason.

Under the same conditions described on the first post, I'm getting battery life of five hours max.

I recently tried streaming a 360p video. Battery life of one hour and forty minutes (streamed a fifty minute video and went from 100%>48%). What the heck is this...

My apologies good people. It seems I had some extra processes running in the background without my knowing it. After disabling it and running a 50% battery test, I am able to achieve 30 minutes over Apple's ten hours of battery life.

 

What were these processes? I am quite interested cause I am also falling a few hours off the promised battery time. Using ichat, skype (chat only), having mail and calender open, surfing around a bit on the net with Finder open.

How much should using VLC and watching movies from the HDD drain on battery?

Skype video calling seems to completely demolish the battery time, is there anything to do to reduce CPU usage?

 

I'll offer my battery life experience as well since you specifically mention streaming video. Streaming internet video DESTROYS battery life in OSX. If you install or open the CPU monitor you will see 320-480p flash video utilizes 30-50% CPU power. 720p HD video ups it to 50-70%. I have a 2009 MBP 13...the battery life can be reporting 5 hrs remaining, start-up a web video and it'll drop to 1 hr within a matter of seconds.

 

are you undervolting os x as well?

 

Currently not yet, I'm afraid. I'll buy Coolbook soon and throttle it to 768 MHz-1568 MHz (the last two digits I'm going by memory, might not be correct) at 0.8750V. Hopefully that'll get me some extra juice as I've noticed sometimes it needlessly jumps to the maximum multiplier (2396 MHz) when browsing the internet (even with flash videos I doubt that's necessary).

@snork: That's interesting... hopefully when I get the chance to throttle I'll have a better experience. Because honestly getting an hour and a half to two hours streaming videos is putrid.

@svarto: They were custom processes (I downloaded a few programs) that I didn't properly uninstall- which when I come to think of it is really sad, as uninstalling in OS X is stupid simple.