[bluejam]

A friend of mine just got a new 1gig 14" iBook. We calibrated the battery according to the manual. How long can she work on word processing and internet browsing from a full charge? The salesman said 5 hours and I find that hard to believe.
Again, we're just talking word and internet.

What are you students out there getting with yours?

[iREZ]

I get about 4 hours with my screen dimmed to three blocks and I shut down BT, run on reduced settings, and take out any CD's in the optical drive, and I'm talking about my 12" Powerbook. According to most in this forum, the iBook outlasts Powerbooks in Battery life, so I would think that you should be able to get 5 hours, but just barely. Good luck to ya!

[d4nth3m4n]

i get about 5 hours on my 14" ibook. i think the biggest battery hog is the backlight of the screen. i am usually in a library on battery power, so i dim it to the lowest possible setting.

this is with airport doing its thing, and usually itunes, ichat, word and safari running.

[jon l. dawson]

I dont know how you all use your iBook with the screen so dim. My iBook 800 is fairly new and the screen is really dim to begin with. The lowest I can stand using it under normal conditions in my house is at two bars from maximum. The only way I could really use it much lower is if there was no light in the house. So what gives? Is there something wrong with my laptop or is it just me? My previous Sony Vaio laptop was a lot brighter, not that I am complaining.

[pysan]

I have pushed my 12" ibook G4 to just over 5 hours on numerous occasions at school. This is with the backlight down to 1 or 2 bars, and with airport going full bore the entire time. I was even using PS and Illustrator for most of the time. I never have any optical disks in the drive though, and I have the ibook maxed out on RAM. Hope that helps.

[BobVB]

Originally posted by jon l. dawson:
I dont know how you all use your iBook with the screen so dim. My iBook 800 is fairly new and the screen is really dim to begin with. The lowest I can stand using it under normal conditions in my house is at two bars from maximum. The only way I could really use it much lower is if there was no light in the house. So what gives? Is there something wrong with my laptop or is it just me? My previous Sony Vaio laptop was a lot brighter, not that I am complaining.

Well something's different - in any even slightly dark environment I can use my new G4 iBook on one tick of backlight. Even in a sunny Starbucks as long as my screen is facing away from the light i can get by with just half brightness.

[jon l. dawson]

Well, I suppose my question then is, how do I find out if my iBook is as bright as it's supposed to be?

[macaddict0001]

Originally posted by jon l. dawson:
Well, I suppose my question then is, how do I find out if my iBook is as bright as it's supposed to be?

i got more than six hours with screen brightness down and just playing Dvd's I'm pretty sure the keyboard uses more battery than the drive

[SupahCoolX]

If you use the Calibrate function in the Displays System Preference pane, or a third-party program like SuperCal (find it at www.versiontracker.com ) you might get a brighter, better quality display.