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    Tips on how to Optimize Battery Life?

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by StrongerThanAll, Jan 20, 2009.

  1. StrongerThanAll

    StrongerThanAll Notebook Deity

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    I know the usual drill, disable bluetooth, reduce brightness and etc..
    but since i bought my mac (October) my battery life have decreased from 4:30 hours to about over 3 hours. Does anyone have anytips? Use black wallpapers? Use safari instead of firefox?

    We could make sticky thread for reference for future mac owners.

    please share your tips
    i am using safari right now, and it seems to be consuming more energy than FF
     
    StrongerThanAll, Jan 20, 2009
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  2. Colton

    Colton Also Proudly American

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    What is you HDD settings? It could be that your HDD won't go to sleep, and that could cause you to lose a tremendous amount of battery life. Also look at your activities through Activity Monitor or Istat Pro, to see if you have anything running in the background. One other thing, check to see your battery health. Hope that helps!
     
    Colton, Jan 20, 2009
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  3. StrongerThanAll

    StrongerThanAll Notebook Deity

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    Thanks!
    battery health at 99%

    i am only running adium, firefox and cisco VPN client.
    maybe i need to calibrate my battery

    i tried using safari for a while and my battery time remaining dropped to 3 hours, and now using firefox, it went up to 3:45
    which is pretty weird.
    About the HDD settings, wouldnt it only go to sleep when its idle?
     
    StrongerThanAll, Jan 20, 2009
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  4. Colton

    Colton Also Proudly American

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    Yeah, I think calibrating your battery might help the computer give you more accurate and reasonable battery life. About the HDD, that was a mistake. What are you doing in FF and Safari, YouTube or USTREAM? I think your best bet is to calibrate you battery, then see what happens.
     
    Colton, Jan 20, 2009
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  5. StrongerThanAll

    StrongerThanAll Notebook Deity

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    just browsing.. not streaming anything.
    yeah.. ill try to calibrate it cause its fluctuating a lot.

    So colorful backgrounds and adium do not affect battery life that much?
     
    StrongerThanAll, Jan 20, 2009
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  6. Colton

    Colton Also Proudly American

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    I wouldn't think that colorful backgrounds would affect the battery at all, or it might put a bit of stress on your GPU to handle vivid colors, but that's just a guess. I have iChat running all the time, and I don't see a decrease in battery life at all.
     
    Colton, Jan 20, 2009
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  7. EnterKnight

    EnterKnight Notebook Evangelist

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    Safari has better battery efficiency, overall... Firefox goes a lil' nuts on CPU usage if Flash is enabled, using more power than Safari.

    Calibrating the battery is a great idea once in a while - for any notebook.
     
    EnterKnight, Jan 20, 2009
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  8. fredf

    fredf Notebook Consultant

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    Is there any downside to putting the HDD to sleep? Does it slow the system down?
    I have an MBA with SSD, would putting the HDD (ssd) to sleep prolong my battery life?
     
    fredf, Jan 20, 2009
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  9. Colton

    Colton Also Proudly American

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    With the HDD going to sleep, you system goes to sleep also. If you ever wonder what happens when you don't use your computer for say, 10 minutes, and then the screen goes black, that's when your HDD's go to sleep. It will greatly improve your battery life, but you can't do anything with your computer unless you wake it back up. It's pretty much a useless battery saving technique.
     
    Colton, Jan 20, 2009
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  10. circa86

    circa86 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    Software related methods of increasing battery life won't really be effective enough to be extremely noticeable. The big ones that play a part are the ones you have already mentioned.

    And the absolute biggest one is the screen brightness, it definitely has the largest overall effect on battery life.

    Your situation most likely is just calling for a calibration of the battery.
     
    circa86, Jan 20, 2009
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  11. StrongerThanAll

    StrongerThanAll Notebook Deity

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    the thing is some people are reported almost 6 hours
    i can barely get 5 :(
     
    StrongerThanAll, Jan 20, 2009
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  12. ValkyrieLenneth

    ValkyrieLenneth Notebook Evangelist

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    These are my tips:
    - Buy more RAM.
    - Upgrade to SSD if possible (I gained about 20+ mins with this upgrade on my SR Macbook Pro).
    - Use Flashblock and Adblock Plus extensions with Firefox.
    - Don't leave heavy softwares (i.e Photoshop) opened if you don't need them.
    - Let your macbook sleep instead of turning it off and then on everytime.
    ... along with reduce brightness, bluetooth off... etc.
     
    ValkyrieLenneth, Jan 21, 2009
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  13. StrongerThanAll

    StrongerThanAll Notebook Deity

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    StrongerThanAll, Jan 21, 2009
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  14. ValkyrieLenneth

    ValkyrieLenneth Notebook Evangelist

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    For an instance, SSD can do more jobs in less time. So most of the time it will be in idle mode which consumes much less battery than magnetic HDD. Almost all battery tests that i have ever read are all about stressing out the SSD, it's not like real life usage. Also, the specification of my SSD shows that it requires less power than my previous HDDs which are WD/Toshiba 250GB 5400rpm.
     
    ValkyrieLenneth, Jan 21, 2009
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  15. StrongerThanAll

    StrongerThanAll Notebook Deity

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    oh... yeah.. im gonna wait till they have affordable ssd hard drives with large capacity
     
    StrongerThanAll, Jan 21, 2009
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  16. harr89

    harr89 Notebook Enthusiast

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    That article has been proved wrong as the tests used do not replicate real-world situations. Another team ran benchmarks that actually replicated web browsing and such which showed that SSD's are the bare minimum would be equal to HD in terms of battery usage but most likely will provide better battery life.
     
    harr89, Jan 22, 2009
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  17. circa86

    circa86 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    Those people probably didn't fully test the battery for 6 hours either, they probably saw it for a second in the battery life indicator menubar icon and wrote it up.

    Your battery life is completely normal.
     
    circa86, Jan 22, 2009
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  18. schwann

    schwann Notebook Consultant

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    it is near impossible to get 5 hours if you are lightly using it (browsing, chatting) for the entire length of the battery life no matter how bright the screen.
     
    schwann, Jan 22, 2009
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  19. StrongerThanAll

    StrongerThanAll Notebook Deity

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    does anyone if those fastmac truepower batteries work?
     
    StrongerThanAll, Jan 22, 2009
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