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Mskr · May 9, 2003, 06:54 PM

I just drove back today from Des Moines, Iowa and decided to use my PowerBook as a glorified iPod, and set up the energy saver like this:

1) Never sleep
2) Put display to sleep: 1 minute (minimum)
3) Put harddrive to sleep when possible
4) Reduced processor power

Then, I set up a play list of about 6 hours of music, started it playing and then dimmed the screen all the way down. I got approximately 4 hours 22 minutes worth of music out of the PowerBook! Not too shabby, considering it's not optimized for this kind of usage. I guess the 5 hour battery life that they advertise isn't _that_ far off of reality. I actually think I could have squeezed more battery life out of it by doing a little more work. One thing that would have helped is if I could buffer a bunch of the mp3s into memory so that the HD could spin down & never need to spin up. Since I have 640 MB of memory on this machine, I could buffer quite a lot of music (say, half that) and have 320 minutes worth of music (or 5 hours, 20 minutes) and not have to spin the hard drive at all. Of course, I don't know of any way to easily do this with iTunes, but maybe another mp3 player?

Anyhow, just wanted to mention these results...

The Placid Casual · May 10, 2003, 04:36 AM

I'm also pretty impressed (so far! only had it 4 days!) with battery life on the 12"...

I usuallly get 4-4 1/2 hours with my normal work setup (dimmed screen, Word, internet, email, iTunes etc)...

I was really worried that I would miss the battery life of my G3 iBook, but in reality the 12" is just as good so far...

wg2499 · May 10, 2003, 06:08 PM

I get about 2 hours with regular surfing .. bluetooth and airport extreme going strong.. I am content also full screen brightness and processor at full I am approximating 2 hrs but I just looked up and it is saying 2 hrs now and I have been on for 30 -45 mins.. so even better....

Mastrap · May 11, 2003, 03:00 AM

2.5 - 3 hours with everything on, airport, bluetooth, full brightness. 4.5 - 5 hours with everything off, mail app running, light browsing via ethernet, using Nixus for word-processing.

fisherKing · May 11, 2003, 04:56 AM

i keep THINKING about getting the 12"...

was looking at my roommates new sony vaio...
12"s screen, small...(not-so) light...

but she has an extra battery attached to the rear, underneath, which winds up raising the back (as my podium pad does)

and gets an estimated 9 hours between both batteries.

even if it's less (say 6 or 7 hours)...i want that!

my pismo can take a second battery (in the cd bay); would be nic to have possibilities like that in the newer powerbooks.

we need options! longer battery life!

dettociao · May 11, 2003, 05:36 PM

Originally posted by fisherKing:
i keep THINKING about getting the 12"...

was looking at my roommates new sony vaio...
12"s screen, small...(not-so) light...

but she has an extra battery attached to the rear, underneath, which winds up raising the back (as my podium pad does)

and gets an estimated 9 hours between both batteries.

even if it's less (say 6 or 7 hours)...i want that!

my pismo can take a second battery (in the cd bay); would be nic to have possibilities like that in the newer powerbooks.

we need options! longer battery life!

You can buy an extra battery.

fisherKing · May 11, 2003, 06:28 PM

i could carry an extra battery, true. but sorta defeats the idea of a small, self-contained laptop...

Mskr · May 12, 2003, 03:56 PM

Originally posted by fisherKing:
i keep THINKING about getting the 12"...

was looking at my roommates new sony vaio...
12"s screen, small...(not-so) light...

but she has an extra battery attached to the rear, underneath, which winds up raising the back (as my podium pad does)

and gets an estimated 9 hours between both batteries.

even if it's less (say 6 or 7 hours)...i want that!

my pismo can take a second battery (in the cd bay); would be nic to have possibilities like that in the newer powerbooks.

we need options! longer battery life!

There is such an animal... err... battery, for the PowerBook, but it's by a third-party:
MCETech.

2 to 3 times the battery life... Dont' know which size it fits, though, or if they'll come out with a 12" version...

escher · May 13, 2003, 02:41 PM

Originally posted by dettociao:
You can buy an extra battery.

Sure you can buy an extra battery. But unlike with the 15" PB, you have to shut down the 12-inch PowerBook to swap batteries (like with the iBook). That makes swapping batteries a lot less practical. Boy those dual battery bays on the PB 5xx Blackbird through PB G3 Pismo were smart!

Escher

mosch · May 13, 2003, 03:15 PM

Originally posted by escher:
you have to shut down the 12-inch PowerBook to swap batteries

I just swapped out the battery on my 12 inch by closing the lid to put it to sleep, swapping the battery, then opening the lid again. No problem, and no full powerdown required, and the entire procedure took somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 seconds.

Hozie · May 13, 2003, 05:12 PM

Huh? Are you 100% sure about that mosch? Stupid question, obviously, but I believe Apple has expressly stated that hot-swapping batteries was a no-no for the 12" (including when it's asleep). As I understood it at the time, the 12" doesn't have a temporary battery that would keep power flowing to the necessary components while the swap was carried out... Care to confirm that it IS possible?

MacNStein · May 13, 2003, 07:28 PM

Originally posted by Hozie:
Huh? Are you 100% sure about that mosch? Stupid question, obviously, but I believe Apple has expressly stated that hot-swapping batteries was a no-no for the 12" (including when it's asleep). As I understood it at the time, the 12" doesn't have a temporary battery that would keep power flowing to the necessary components while the swap was carried out... Care to confirm that it IS possible?

Well, hmmm, technically it could work, if you're very fast. See, the 12" PB has a very small Li-Ion PRAM battery, much smaller than in the TiBooks and BigAl. But, I'd say it would keep a system in sleep mode for 20-30 seconds. Perhaps long enough to swap batteries, if you're very quick about it.

icruise · May 13, 2003, 09:24 PM

Originally posted by mosch:
I just swapped out the battery on my 12 inch by closing the lid to put it to sleep, swapping the battery, then opening the lid again. No problem, and no full powerdown required, and the entire procedure took somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 seconds.

Silly question, but were you plugged in when you swapped the batteries? Because I have tried and you cannot hotswap batteries in the 12" powerbook or ibook. I believe there is even an Apple knowledge base article about this.

escher · May 13, 2003, 10:58 PM

Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks that you can't hot-swap batteries on the 12-inch PowerBook. I have to admit that I personally don't remember reading a KB article about the 12" PowerBook's lack of hot-swappability. I simply inferred this from the iBook's lack of hot-swappability.

Sure would have been nice if Apple had put in a 5 minute sleep battery while they slapped a G4 onto the iBook mobo to make the 12-inch PowerBook.

Escher

Simon · May 14, 2003, 03:53 AM

Originally posted by escher:
Boy those dual battery bays on the PB 5xx Blackbird through PB G3 Pismo were smart!

Yeah, but having bays makes the machine a tad larger than using non-moveable parts.

I think a real Apple-like solution would be if they came up with a new type of ComboDrive or SuperDrive. You could buy an additional battery the size and shape of a CD or DVD. As soon as you insert this battery into the drive, the computer shuts the drive off and uses the inserted battery as an additional power source.

That would give you the Pismo advantage of being able to sacrifice the optical drive for additional power, but would still give you the thin form factor of the current PowerBooks.

Don't know if it would be technically feasible, but it would sure have that Apple branded wow-look-at-that-it's-so-cool-factor.

icruise · May 14, 2003, 06:27 AM

Well I just tried hot-swapping batteries on my 12" powerbook again just to make sure I wasn't imagining things last time. Disconnected from AC power, put computer to sleep and removed the battery. The sleep light went out immediately, and when I put the battery back in and pressed the power button, it started up as it would from the "off" condition. It took about 15 minutes to reboot since it wasn't shut down correctly.

In other words: it doesn't work!

escher · May 14, 2003, 11:57 AM

Originally posted by Icruise:
Well I just tried hot-swapping batteries on my 12" powerbook again just to make sure I wasn't imagining things last time. . . In other words: it doesn't work!

Looks like mosch was plugged in to the power adapter when he "successfully" sleep-swapped his battery.

Maybe Apple will address this problem with the Rev.B 12-inch PowerBook. A small 60-second sleep battery can't take up that much space. This is definitely a feature that should be on a PowerBook, probably even more so than DVI-out.

Back on topic: any more reports about battery life?

Escher