Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

gururafiki · Apr 20, 2005, 05:13 PM

Anyone with a powerbook notice that 10.3.9 sucks the life of your battery when your laptop is sleeping? This is happening to me which is strange because I thought the system is off besides anything stored in the RAM when it is sleeping. What would cause a drainage in the battery?

k2director · Apr 20, 2005, 05:54 PM

That's been the case on earlier OS updates. Maybe forever.

I never leave my PowerBook sleeping with a battery over night, unless it's plugged into a wall. Otherwise, I get to my destination the next morning, and find I have 80-85% of a charge, right off the bat.

kcmac · Apr 20, 2005, 06:05 PM

K2 is right.

Big Mac · Apr 20, 2005, 07:20 PM

A certain amount of electricity must be expended to keep the RAM and processor alive - the processor is is dozing but it is not off. On average you'll lose 4-5% battery life per day in sleep mode. If you're seeing a more substantial loss, that may be something to look into.

TailsToo · Apr 20, 2005, 07:54 PM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

A certain amount of electricity must be expended to keep the RAM and processor alive - the processor is is dozing but it is not off. On average you'll lose 4-5% battery life per day in sleep mode. If you're seeing a more substantial loss, that may be something to look into.

I can still get a few days from my PB in sleep mode without plugging in. I don't see that 10.3.9 made it any worse.

gururafiki · Apr 20, 2005, 08:45 PM

Its more in the lines of what k2director said. I let it sleep overnight, and the next day when I get to work it is down to 85%. Before 10.3.9 it was never below 90%.

Simon · Apr 21, 2005, 02:06 AM

I think you guys are getting fooled. I've noticed that since installing 10.3.9 the battery reading is completely off when I wake my PowerBook from sleep. Yesterday, on the way home from the lab, I let my PowerBook sleep for roughly one hour. When I got home, I plugged it in and woke it. At first it said that it would need two hours to fully charge. I was like WTF? Well, it turns out the capacity of the battery (checked with ioreg) was 94% which is what I would have expected. I let it sit there for a couple of minutes and it soon said that it was fully charged.

I think 10.3.9 just fooled around with the battery calibration or with the charging prediction, the PowerBook isn't really using more battery when its asleep. Try it for yourselves, time the battery charging and you'll see that it's the reading that's wrong, not the battery usage.

analogika · Apr 21, 2005, 02:52 AM

rule of thumb has been now for a while: 1% battery capacity per hour of sleep.

Yonidass · Apr 21, 2005, 12:12 PM

I just had a bizarre battery experience with my new 15" PB and 10.3.9 that may be related to this discussion. I unintentionally let my book run down the battery completely overnight, which is something I do from time to time anyway. When I got up this morning, it wouldn't boot even when plugged in. I let it sit connected and it finally started after 20 minutes or so, though now the battery wasn't charging. The power cable was orange to indicate charging but it remained at 0%. I verified this by disconnecting after 30 minutes whereupon the book immediately shut down and wouldn't start again until it had been connected for another 20 minutes or so.

I then took out the battery and reset the PMU but it still wouldn't charge. Then I reinstalled the update but no luck. Finally, I shut down and unplugged the battery for 30 minutes. This seemed to fix it and the battery is now charging as normal. Weird.

Another thing I noticed is that during this wierdness, before I reinstalled the update, my trackpad had gone back to being less responsive when scrolling in some apps, the way it was before the update (the update was supposed to address this). Now it's working well again. Don't know if this was related or not.