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kennethmac2000 · Oct 29, 2002, 11:39 PM

Has my iBook battery really got that much worse over the last month or two, or is it just that Mac OS X 10.2 actually sucks battery life worse than any other release of Mac OS X to date?

Is anyone else experiencing noticably shorter battery life in Jaguar? And, more importantly, does anyone know if Apple is going to fix this?

Mac Guru · Oct 30, 2002, 12:03 AM

I have heard that Apple will fix this in the upcoming 10.2.2 but I don't know for sure. As for the suckin life from the battery I'm with you on that one. I get a good hour and a half now... this has my PC friends laughing pretty good as I bragged about the 5 hours I got before... Grrr

Mac Guru

vvedge · Oct 30, 2002, 04:10 AM

Yes and no....

My battery that came with the ibook dwindled down to 30-45 mins of life max. I called apple, they say its the battery, so I'm getting a new one.

I bought a new battery recently, and I notice that the life is extremely good. 3 hours average, 4-5 with careful power saving....

I never got that kind of life back 10.x days, so I' m figuring that Jaguar's actually doing a decent job with the battery life. People upgrading their ibooks to jaguar now might have slightly worn out batteries, so might not even notice the effects.

Mac Guru · Oct 30, 2002, 04:19 AM

That's pretty shoddy craftsmenship if the battery craps out on you after owning it for a year.

Geez

Eug · Oct 30, 2002, 08:55 AM

No it's X.2.

It's killed my battery life too. But I dunno if it's just a bug, since sometimes my machine shuts itself off when there's over 10% reported. I also get warnings at 16% etc.

Raymate · Oct 30, 2002, 09:16 AM

iIs the battery, I have a 600 and my battery was starting to die a few weeks before 10.2 and now i get about 40-50 and only 20-30 if i use CD drive.

Apple are sending me a new battery as they say it should do around 3h.

i'm a Apple Field Engineer and I have seen a few iBook 500 and now 600 with the same thing. They only seem to last around a year

10.2 is doing better with the battery than 10.1 so get your batterys replaced. You can check this by booting up in OS9 you will see only a few more mins of use over 10.2 but of course much more over 10.1

I do have AppleCare on my iBook. Its wise to do this.

Eug · Oct 30, 2002, 12:24 PM

I'm still getting 75-90 minutes, whereas I was getting 100-120 minutes under X.1.

With OS X.1.5 I would get warnings around 7% and it would shut off at 1%.

With OS X.2 I sometimes get warnings at say 16 or 20% and it will shut off at 1% or 13% depending on the phase of the moon.

It's quite possible that the battery is degrading (but still within acceptable limits), but the wonky battery reporting also suggests that X.2 has issues that need to be corrected.

vvedge · Nov 1, 2002, 05:44 AM

Your batteries are fine, maybe just worn out with use. 1 years pretty good so long as you dont kill it when your warrantee runs out. Then you're f-ed

As far as I know, Jag didn't kill my new battery. Maybe my old one died because I charged and discharged it day in and day out during the school year... dont tell me none of you didnt do something like that.

Whenever Jag reports the wrong battery life, dont get your panties in a bunch. Just put the thing to sleep and wake it up, let it recalculate the battery life again. And don't wait for it to give you the warning first. If you go to sleep and it thinks the battery is critically low, you'd have put your ibook in a coma till you get some AC power...

Word to your mutha, as soon as you go on battery power, check the time remaining. If its wrong (usually half of what it should be), sleep and wake the ibook, and you should be fine.