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mgl · Sep 8, 2002, 05:26 PM

Anybody notice any change in their battery life in Jaguar? Like the rest of humanity, I didn't get close to 5 hours in 10.1. More like 2.5. But the battery life indicator was pretty reliable and when I hit 10% I knew it was time to find an AC outlet.

I find the reliability of the indicator in Jaguar is worse. I was at 26% the other day and 10 seconds l later I was warned I was operating on reserve power. I've never had this happen before. It also seems like I'm not getting as good of battery life now. Anybody done any measurements on this?

Thanks,

Mike

DrSpookles · Sep 8, 2002, 05:45 PM

Part of your problem might be due to having an older battery. I've heard that they have a bad habit of losing capacity. Nature of the beast. Kind of like pixels dying on your LCD

On the other hand, I've had my iBook for about 3 months now, and while I would get 3.5 hours reliably on a fresh charge, with Jaguar I get about 3 or 2.75. I think this is largely due to the inclusion of QE in Jaguar, and other processing that is going on in the background.

sniffer · Sep 10, 2002, 06:11 AM

2.5 sounds like the averge for me in 10.1, so I would assume there is nothing wrong with your battery at least. I don't have 10.2 yet, so I can't comment on your issue..

jmatero · Sep 10, 2002, 08:30 AM

I have 2 700mhz iBooks that operated flawlessly in 10.1. Since updating to 10.2, the "You are operating on reserve battery power" warning pops up when waking from sleep almost all the time... even with 50 or 65% power left on the battery. This is happening on BOTH machines and as of last night, not on our other 466 graphite iBook. Something has gone bad here.....

Robster1958 · Sep 10, 2002, 10:13 AM

i'm getting plus or minus 3hrs w/ mine. use power mgmt in the "auto" setting. no idea how to stretch it to 5. then again, a reliable 3 hrs is pretty good, and i didn't really expect 5.

another question: how long can you leave an iBook sleeping, so that it still has power to wake up?

onomotapoeia · Sep 10, 2002, 10:24 AM

that warning that tells you you are running on reserve battery power is a bug in jaguar. apple knows about it and it's documented in the apple knowledge base. it's a false message.

lookmark · Sep 10, 2002, 01:32 PM

Yeesh.

I'm getting about 1 hour (or less!), and that's with very little disk activity, power management set to "longest battery life", no Classic, and brightness turned way down (only two or three notches from off). It also seems to take awfully long to recharge.

I think something's wrong with my battery.

I'm using 10.2 on an iBook 500.

One's battery is covered by warranty, right? This doesn't seem normal to me...

wunderkind · Sep 10, 2002, 02:17 PM

In 10.1.5 - was around 3.5 hours.
In 10.2 - is close to 3 hours (3 h. 5 min.).

This is what battery meter says. Never measured with a timer.

funkboy · Sep 10, 2002, 02:50 PM

I get 1 hour and 10 minutes about, same as in 10.1.5. I think I need to fix my battery... or, rather, get a new one.

lookmark · Sep 10, 2002, 04:14 PM

Originally posted by funkboy:
I get 1 hour and 10 minutes about, same as in 10.1.5. I think I need to fix my battery... or, rather, get a new one.

That's about what I got, in 10.1.5.

Mind if I ask what model of iBook do you have, and how old it is?

Mine is a iBook 500, just under a year old.

I'm going to have the battery checked out this week.

wunderkind · Sep 10, 2002, 07:47 PM

I used to get 2.5 hours on a one-year old iBook 500/CD-RW when running 10.1.5.

funkboy · Sep 10, 2002, 11:32 PM

Originally posted by lookmark:

That's about what I got, in 10.1.5.

Mind if I ask what model of iBook do you have, and how old it is?

Mine is a iBook 500, just under a year old.

I'm going to have the battery checked out this week.

Mine is just *over* a year old (no warranty... sucko). Actually, I suppose it's about 2 months over a year now.

It's the first model, an iBook 500 (66 MHz bus), DVD model, with 384 RAM. It also has an Airport card in it that I run constantly (all the time it's on, anyway). I haven't tested it without the Airport card on, I guess.

sniffer · Sep 11, 2002, 03:05 AM

Remember folks. Battery life is relative. Depends a lot on how you use your machine..

MartiNZ · Sep 11, 2002, 04:46 AM

I've had my 600MHz since March, and used to get about 2.5-3 hours under 10.1.5, with, as has been said, pretty damn reliable estimation - and it consistently said plug me in! with 9 minutes left.

Under 10.2, it first says about 3 hours 49 left if I fully charge it then unplug it and put down the brightness, and colours to Thousands. And while I haven't timed it exactly, I think that's pretty accurate for the untaxing stuff I usually do while on battery power.

I've only run it down to needing a power fix once under 10.2, but it complained a lot earlier than under 10.1 - with about 26 minutes left it demanded a plug, and when I didn't give it, it went into unwakable sleep a few minutes later. I thought it would have been smarter if it said Shut me down now! but anyway...
I've noticed that the battery time display also gets stuck Calculating... for a lot longer than it used to, and it seems to have real issues with waking up sometimes. No problems like that under 10.1, but already about 3 force restarts on wakeup using Jaguar - mind you that's probably not the fault of battery issues....

.

iJeremy · Sep 12, 2002, 06:46 AM

Yeah, battery life has decreased in 10.2. Today I got 1:10 on 57%, but before i used to get around 3 hours on my ibook 700 running 10.1.

jmatero · Sep 12, 2002, 03:12 PM

I'm actually considering going back to 10.1.5. My 700mhz gets HALF the battery life, the bottom is hot as hell and the fan keeps coming on if it isn't raised on a stand. I'm not even sure a 2 hour DVD will play on battery power. The funny thing is, I only use it at home for email and websurfing... nothing like photoshop or itunes... just email and surfing... and in a half an hour I go from 100 to under 75%. I was going on 3 nights worth or surfing/email before getting CLOSE to needing a recharge. Now I'm doing it once a night.

DrSpookles · Sep 12, 2002, 04:53 PM

Originally posted by jmatero:
I'm actually considering going back to 10.1.5. My 700mhz gets HALF the battery life, the bottom is hot as hell and the fan keeps coming on if it isn't raised on a stand. I'm not even sure a 2 hour DVD will play on battery power. The funny thing is, I only use it at home for email and websurfing... nothing like photoshop or itunes... just email and surfing... and in a half an hour I go from 100 to under 75%. I was going on 3 nights worth or surfing/email before getting CLOSE to needing a recharge. Now I'm doing it once a night.

I think that the DVD should play fine, given that you set that option in Energy Saver.. Though I think that you might have issues with your battery -- I get 30 mins less under Jaguar, but maybe if you are playing DVDs on battery power under Highest performance, that might be why.

I agree though, I feel the battery pain, although can live with it for the extra benefits of Jaguar.

YoungTurk · Sep 13, 2002, 07:22 AM

Originally posted by jmatero:
I'm actually considering going back to 10.1.5. My 700mhz gets HALF the battery life, the bottom is hot as hell and the fan keeps coming on if it isn't raised on a stand. I'm not even sure a 2 hour DVD will play on battery power. The funny thing is, I only use it at home for email and websurfing... nothing like photoshop or itunes... just email and surfing... and in a half an hour I go from 100 to under 75%. I was going on 3 nights worth or surfing/email before getting CLOSE to needing a recharge. Now I'm doing it once a night.

My experience with my 700 (16 VRAM) iBook running Jaguar is quite the opposite - my battery life has gone from around 2 hrs under 10.1.x to 3+ hours in Jaguar, with no energy savings enabled, and the screen on full brightness. Longer battery life was one of the first benefits from Jaguar that I noticed - and I'm surprised I seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

YoungTurk

chabig · Sep 13, 2002, 08:08 AM

My iBook 600 went from about 2.5 hours (pre-Jag) to 3+ hours (post-Jag). Of course, I took advantage of the improved energy saver controls by setting up the battery option for quickest sleep, stop the hard drive when possible, and reduced processor speed.

Chris

NDBounce · Sep 13, 2002, 12:22 PM

Originally posted by jmatero:
I have 2 700mhz iBooks that operated flawlessly in 10.1. Since updating to 10.2, the "You are operating on reserve battery power" warning pops up when waking from sleep almost all the time... even with 50 or 65% power left on the battery. This is happening on BOTH machines and as of last night, not on our other 466 graphite iBook. Something has gone bad here.....

I have the same issue on my iBook 300mhz. However, I did notice an odd thing the other day.I ignored the warning and my remaining % started to increase. I think, but am not 100% certain that much like myself, when Jag wakes up, it's a little disoriented for a second. After a few seconds it realized that there was power after all. Still, this is an odd "feature."

Peace,

O
B unce!

prolix · Sep 30, 2002, 02:33 PM

i'm having major battery issues with jaguar (or at least this all started shortly after i installed jag)

example: the other day i pull my ibook out. i check the battery level on the battery with the little button. all bars solid. as it should be since i just charged it.

i fire up the ibook. lists 98%. ok well thats fine, maybe i didn't charge it all the way. a few seconds later, 95%, 89%, 85%. all within a couple minutes. i flip the laptop over to consult the battery reader. its flashing. ok. so within 3 minutes my battery goes from a full charge to zero, and osX reads something absolutely different but seems to suck teh battery down 10% every 2 mins.

this just started recently. i get the error low battery warnings constantly from 10.2 even if the battery is full, but jaguar still sucks my battery dry in under an hour.

this is a dual usb ibook, one of the first ones. i bought it in june of last year. does jaguar just hate me? or is my battery fried?

frido:mac · Oct 1, 2002, 01:14 PM

I can only chime in with the "shorter time on battery with 10.2"-crowd....
I also noticed that the harddisk only spins down when the iBook is going to sleep, otherwise it is running all the time. (i tried resetting the Power Manager, but it had no effect)

Machine is an 1yr-old iBook 500/DVD with 384 MB RAM and an Airport Card.

Bye, Frido.

mkoz · Oct 3, 2002, 01:58 PM

i have noticed a huge drop in battery life on my 500MHz ibook even before Jag. my ibook is about 15 months old. less than a year ago i could easily get 2.5+ hours out of my battery, and that included moderate disk activity. before installing Jag i was down to an hour if i was lucky. this does not seem right, does it? i though battery technology had come a long way. now in Jag i'm getting about 40min on a full battery.

so, now it looks like i will have to spend $130-150 each year on a new battery to get decent battery life. something is wrong here.

alex239 · Oct 4, 2002, 03:01 AM

best batt life for me is around 4 hours
-icebook 600 no dvd in drive, brightness down to 2 or 3 notches, and using energy savings pretty frugally.

I like it, how bout you? Still better than a windoze laptop eh?!

mjarski15 · Oct 4, 2002, 05:17 PM

I have only had Jag for about a week and I don't use the iBook alot without it being pluged in but I haven't notice a difference in battery life really. I change the settings in the energy panel to reduce performance when on battery power and I didn't notice any large gain or lose. iBook 700 dual usb, 14"

dvd · Oct 4, 2002, 07:07 PM

i recently got an ibook 700 combo and i never used up all the battery but i managed to use it for 2 hours and the meter said there was and hour and 30 minutes left. something around there.

bleee · Oct 5, 2002, 04:30 PM

Originally posted by mgl:
Anybody notice any change in their battery life in Jaguar? Like the rest of humanity, I didn't get close to 5 hours in 10.1. More like 2.5. But the battery life indicator was pretty reliable and when I hit 10% I knew it was time to find an AC outlet.

I find the reliability of the indicator in Jaguar is worse. I was at 26% the other day and 10 seconds l later I was warned I was operating on reserve power. I've never had this happen before. It also seems like I'm not getting as good of battery life now. Anybody done any measurements on this?

Thanks,

Mike

I've got an iBook 600Mhz (late 2001) I didn't get anything past 2.5hrs when I first bought the iBook 5months ago (even thought they claim 5hrs, maybe if you just have it on and not do anything) and I'm sure not getting anything past 2.5hrs now with 10.2.1 even with optimized for battery power saving i.e. reduce processor speed, screen off sooner, spin down hd sooner etc...

bleee · Oct 5, 2002, 04:32 PM

Originally posted by mkoz:
i have noticed a huge drop in battery life on my 500MHz ibook even before Jag. my ibook is about 15 months old. less than a year ago i could easily get 2.5+ hours out of my battery, and that included moderate disk activity. before installing Jag i was down to an hour if i was lucky. this does not seem right, does it? i though battery technology had come a long way. now in Jag i'm getting about 40min on a full battery.

so, now it looks like i will have to spend $130-150 each year on a new battery to get decent battery life. something is wrong here.

If you are under apple care and you feel there is something wrong with the battery you can try and get a free replacement. I have heard of people getting free replacements after they have proved to apple there is something wrong.

thePurpleGiant · Oct 6, 2002, 08:05 AM

I know I know, this is the wrong forum, I have a PowerBook G3...I just felt like moping. In 10.1.5 I got 12 minutes battery life!! In 10.2 I get....12 minutes! Yay for me! That's almost enough time to open the program I want to use, write a 3 line document, save it then shut down

Jeremy

[email protected] · Oct 9, 2002, 07:41 AM

I got my iBook 700MHz in June.
Under 10.1 I had close to 5 hours on the battery.
I could easily get 2 to 3 hours DVD video out of it.

After upgrading to 10.2.1 (I only installed 10.2 to get there.) I've noticed the battery level indicator has gone more or less wacky; it can't be trusted.

But, also, my iBook uses a LOT of battery power while sleeping. Before, a fully charged battery would have lost about 5 minutes when waked 12 hours later. Now, I'm down to about 1,5 hours... Also, the iBook seems to be 'luke warm' while sleeping, especially on the left hand side, where the hard drive is. Seems something is going on 'at night'...

Apart from that, I'm lucky to get 4 hours out of a fully charged battery in 10.2.1.
Playing DVDs reduces this to 1,5 to 2 hours max.

Bankmann