[iohead]

I guess there's still interest left in these things

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/pb17/

-A

[AssassyN]

Wow! What a read! I just sat back for a good 20-30 minutes and read your entire review and your terrible "receiving saga" that I had previously not heard about! Yikes! I must say you handled yourself well, as I would've been completely off my hinges after that event!

Your review was top-notch!!! I loved it, probably more than my own in many aspects! And is that website your own creation? If so, it's marvelous! The layout is absolutely beautiful and it was a marvel to look at and navigate. Very impressive!

My only question is, you stated in your usage example that you used AirPort but had your Bluetooth and "Ethernet" turned off. Does this mean you disable your ethernet jack from auto-sensing every so often which eats up battery life? How do you go about disabling your ethernet jack? I'm aware of how to disable AirPort & Bluetooth, but not the Ethernet jack. Thanks!

Again, wonderful review, kudos to the time you spent on it!

[Mohammed Al-Sabah]

wow nice post thx alot bud

[iohead]

My only question is, you stated in your usage example that you used AirPort but had your Bluetooth and "Ethernet" turned off. Does this mean you disable your ethernet jack from auto-sensing every so often which eats up battery life? How do you go about disabling your ethernet jack? I'm aware of how to disable AirPort & Bluetooth, but not the Ethernet jack. Thanks!

Thanks for the kind words

There are various ways (depending on how brute-force you want to be) to turn the Ethernet "off":

* Go to System Preferences -> Network, and in the pull-down menu called "Show:", select "Network Port Configurations". If you de-select "Built-in Ethernet" here, it would make the Ethernet device "inactive". Now, I am not sure if this removes power from the device completely - it should - the device is not active, so it should not be autoselecting/autosensing.

* If it turns out (unlikely - I can't confirm just yet) that the device tries to autoselect even when inactive, you could always explicitly set the media to be "none", or even a valid value, from the terminal:

sudo ifconfig en0 media 100baseTX, or

sudo ifconfig en0 media none

Since media type is explicitly set to "none", it should not try to auto-sense for anything.

* This is really stretching it, but you can just unload the kernel extension for the built-in Ethernet:

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/whatever.kext

Note that this *is* brute-force. It would make the Ethernet device "disappear" - it won't show up in the System Preferences -> Network panel. I don't recommend this! Then again, if you don't have a driver loaded for a device, I don't know if the device's power status defaults to OFF or ON in Mac OS. You might actually need the driver to "manage" power.

Of course, this is un-doable. You can "kextload" the thing back, or just reboot the system.

Hope that helps.

-A

[Taloston Man]

Excellent review!

Perhaps I missed everyone else's discovery of this, but isn't this the first Apple laptop in a WHILE that has supported battery switching in sleep?
If so, that's quite a convenience.
Having to logout and shutdown to change batteries if you're the sort of person who has two or even three is quite an inconvenience....

[spaced]

Originally posted by Taloston Man:
Excellent review!

Perhaps I missed everyone else's discovery of this, but isn't this the first Apple laptop in a WHILE that has supported battery switching in sleep?
If so, that's quite a convenience.
Having to logout and shutdown to change batteries if you're the sort of person who has two or even three is quite an inconvenience....

PowerBooks have had this ability for as long as I can remember.

iBooks, however, are lacking in this department but I may be wrong.

[AssassyN]

Originally posted by iohead:
Thanks for the kind words

There are various ways (depending on how brute-force you want to be) to turn the Ethernet "off":

* Go to System Preferences -> Network, and in the pull-down menu called "Show:", select "Network Port Configurations". If you de-select "Built-in Ethernet" here, it would make the Ethernet device "inactive". Now, I am not sure if this removes power from the device completely - it should - the device is not active, so it should not be autoselecting/autosensing.

* If it turns out (unlikely - I can't confirm just yet) that the device tries to autoselect even when inactive, you could always explicitly set the media to be "none", or even a valid value, from the terminal:

sudo ifconfig en0 media 100baseTX, or

sudo ifconfig en0 media none

Since media type is explicitly set to "none", it should not try to auto-sense for anything.

* This is really stretching it, but you can just unload the kernel extension for the built-in Ethernet:

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/whatever.kext

Note that this *is* brute-force. It would make the Ethernet device "disappear" - it won't show up in the System Preferences -> Network panel. I don't recommend this! Then again, if you don't have a driver loaded for a device, I don't know if the device's power status defaults to OFF or ON in Mac OS. You might actually need the driver to "manage" power.

Of course, this is un-doable. You can "kextload" the thing back, or just reboot the system.

Hope that helps.

-A

Thanks a bunch for explaination bro! I'll be taking my PB with me on the our band's 3 day road trip starting tomorrow morning and will give it a shot!

[Taloston Man]

Originally posted by spaced:
PowerBooks have had this ability for as long as I can remember.

iBooks, however, are lacking in this department but I may be wrong.

Ah, grand!
Somewhere along the line I picked up the notion that this was a feature nixed when the first TiBook's were released (and why everyone freaked out when they found out they couldn't insert a second battery).

[iohead]

Originally posted by iohead:
Thanks for the kind words

There are various ways (depending on how brute-force you want to be) to turn the Ethernet "off":

* Go to System Preferences -> Network, and in the pull-down menu called "Show:", select "Network Port Configurations". If you de-select "Built-in Ethernet" here, it would make the Ethernet device "inactive". Now, I am not sure if this removes power from the device completely - it should - the device is not active, so it should not be autoselecting/autosensing.

* If it turns out (unlikely - I can't confirm just yet) that the device tries to autoselect even when inactive, you could always explicitly set the media to be "none", or even a valid value, from the terminal:

sudo ifconfig en0 media 100baseTX, or

sudo ifconfig en0 media none

Since media type is explicitly set to "none", it should not try to auto-sense for anything.

* This is really stretching it, but you can just unload the kernel extension for the built-in Ethernet:

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/whatever.kext

Note that this *is* brute-force. It would make the Ethernet device "disappear" - it won't show up in the System Preferences -> Network panel. I don't recommend this! Then again, if you don't have a driver loaded for a device, I don't know if the device's power status defaults to OFF or ON in Mac OS. You might actually need the driver to "manage" power.

Of course, this is un-doable. You can "kextload" the thing back, or just reboot the system.

Hope that helps.

-A

OK, I looked at the Ethernet card device driver, and it (as expected) has the appropriate power-management. The device can be in multiple power states, and making it "inactive" should not cause any power drain.

-A

[AssassyN]

Originally posted by iohead:
OK, I looked at the Ethernet card device driver, and it (as expected) has the appropriate power-management. The device can be in multiple power states, and making it "inactive" should not cause any power drain.

-A

Ahhh, nice! Thanks again!