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Over Achiever · 12:47 AM

I was looking at the spec sheet and I found this

55-watt-hour lithium-ion prismatic battery (with integrated charge indicator LEDs) providing up to 4.5 hours of battery life.

Huh?

JustinD · Jan 15, 2003, 01:05 PM

Hmmm, perhaps a derivitive (or another name) of a Lithium-Polymer battery? My T68i has one, and the little sucker stays powered for a WEEK (7 days) of higher-than-average use. I remember there being a reason why Li-Poly isn't used for devices with higher power draw... anyone know?

RT3434 · Jan 15, 2003, 01:23 PM

I read that this means the battery itself is square, not round.

Or is that the other way around?

Eug · Jan 15, 2003, 01:26 PM

It's a Lithium ion battery. I think the Prismatic batteries are somewhat lighter but I'm not sure.

Of more interest to me though is the fact that the TiBook 15" as a 61 W-hr battery. The 17" has a 55.

Thus, with the same CPU, the TiBook battery should last much longer.

chipchen · Jan 15, 2003, 01:57 PM

http://www.nec-tokin.net/now/english...t/me/kaku.html

issa · Jan 15, 2003, 02:02 PM

I believe the primary advantage to the prismatic lithium ion battery is price reduction.

appledude83 · Jan 15, 2003, 06:38 PM

Yeah it may just be a small improvement but I'm all for it. I can't wait until there are awesome batteries that last weeks.

seanyepez · Jan 16, 2003, 12:41 AM

The batteries are also quite a bit thinner. This helps to reduce the overall thickness of the PowerBook. Despite better aesthetics, a 55-watt-hour charge is fairly weak for a machine as big as the 17-inch PowerBook.

Eug · Jan 16, 2003, 12:54 AM

Originally posted by seanyepez:
The batteries are also quite a bit thinner. This helps to reduce the overall thickness of the PowerBook. Despite better aesthetics, a 55-watt-hour charge is fairly weak for a machine as big as the 17-inch PowerBook.

Yep, especially considering the much smaller TiBook has 11% more juice in its battery.

OTOH, Apple needs to cut costs. If this is one of the ways they need to do it, then so be it. I suspect part of the issue will be addressed with the new 7457 chips, since I'm guessing they will use less power than the 1 GHz 7455.

cwasko · Jan 16, 2003, 12:54 AM

OT: But I think my biggest pre-dissapointment to the 17" Lapzilla is that it only has one battery. They made the thing a monster, there should be a way to squeeze in 2 batteries to garner more than a whimpy 4.5 hours of battery life. The G3 PowerBooks could have 2 batteries in them, they used to last for ever. Luckily I won't be using too far from a socket too often, but it does mystify me.

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Jan 16, 2003, 01:47 AM

Originally posted by Eug:

Thus, with the same CPU, the TiBook battery should last much longer.

Apple rates the Ti as 30 minites longer. As the display on the 17 inch is bigger and has a backlight keyboard, bigger speakers it could also have something to do with it.

seanyepez · Jan 16, 2003, 02:15 AM

The smaller battery was used to save weight as well. Any heavier than 6.8 pounds and it would be thought of as a brick like Dell and Sony desktop replacement notebooks.

CatOne · Jan 16, 2003, 01:46 PM

Originally posted by cwasko:
OT: But I think my biggest pre-dissapointment to the 17" Lapzilla is that it only has one battery. They made the thing a monster, there should be a way to squeeze in 2 batteries to garner more than a whimpy 4.5 hours of battery life. The G3 PowerBooks could have 2 batteries in them, they used to last for ever. Luckily I won't be using too far from a socket too often, but it does mystify me.

4.5 hours is wimpy? WTF?

Get an extra battery, and swap it in when you need it.

My Toshiba laptop gives me an hour and 15 minutes on a charge. My 800 DVI gives me about 2 hours 15 minute, and I take an extra battery so that's 4.5 hours. That's pretty damn good for a laptop. If you need more, get an extra battery or plug it in. You don't need to power it down to swap batteries, even.

schalliol · Jan 16, 2003, 04:03 PM

Yeah, where does Apple get off in saying that the Ti has a 5 hour battery? On the lowest setting of brightness at reduced processor draw, etc. I could only get barely more than 4 hours of battery on my 1GHz TiBook. Has anyone really gotten 5 hours?

Also, if you have to set it like I've been doing to use it, why not just use a PowerBook G3 with dual batteries, it'd probably be as fast with the reduced processor speed on the G4.

schalliol · Jan 16, 2003, 04:06 PM

...looking at another post. Perhaps a slot for a second battery in the 17 would be good. It wouldn't add any weight for the specs and probably most people wouldn't use the second, but some would. It would make it possible to run something in the background without putting to sleep too.

speedraycer · Jan 16, 2003, 05:01 PM

prizmativ batteries are made in a flat form. The regualar lith-ion batteries are cells in a round form. if you broke open a tibook battery, you would see round cells in the battery case. the big-Al battery would be flat

schalliol · Jan 16, 2003, 05:08 PM

Yeah, oh there's a name for the AlBook, Big Gay Al, you know from South Park

Boy, am I helpful today....

cwasko · Jan 16, 2003, 06:31 PM

Originally posted by CatOne:
4.5 hours is wimpy? WTF?

Get an extra battery, and swap it in when you need it.

My Toshiba laptop gives me an hour and 15 minutes on a charge. My 800 DVI gives me about 2 hours 15 minute, and I take an extra battery so that's 4.5 hours. That's pretty damn good for a laptop. If you need more, get an extra battery or plug it in. You don't need to power it down to swap batteries, even.

Well, I have an iBook where they tell me I can get 5 hours. I'm not getting close to that. So, if they are telling you that that thing is going to get 4.5, it most likely to be 1.5. So, yea, and extra battery would be nice so maybe I could realistically get 3 out of it. But, WTF? Who am I to complain.

escher · Jan 17, 2003, 12:27 PM

Originally posted by CatOne:
If you need more, get an extra battery... You don't need to power it down to swap batteries, even.

The TiBook supports hot-swapping of batteries, i.e. you can swap batteries while it's asleep. The iBook does not let you swap batteries while it's asleep. You need to shut down the entire system to swap batteries. Since the 12" PowerBook is related to the iBook at least battery-wise, I wonder: Will the 12" PowerBook let you swap batteries while it's asleep? Or will we have to shut down our 12" PowerBooks to swap?

Escher

schalliol · Jan 17, 2003, 12:36 PM

It should, it all depends on whether it has the battery backup solution that the othe PowerBooks do. Essentially its another battery that powers the RAM. Of course they could just not include it.

However, if not, what are some of the reasons that make it a PowerBook and not an iBook G4?

Superchicken · Jan 17, 2003, 02:59 PM

I heard you can't hot swap... but since I don't know much about laptops... do you plug the power addapter into the battery to run the machine from the wall or not?
If not couldn't you just plug it in for a sec to swap batteries?
I dono I'll learn more of being a laptop user once I get one of the 12 inchers

By the way I preffer lapzilla, simply because I would never want to put a laptop called big gay Al on my lap... I'd just feel pretty uncomfortable.

OwlBoy · Jan 17, 2003, 03:05 PM

Originally posted by Superchic[k]en:
I heard you can't hot swap... but since I don't know much about laptops... do you plug the power addapter into the battery to run the machine from the wall or not?
If not couldn't you just plug it in for a sec to swap batteries?
I dono I'll learn more of being a laptop user once I get one of the 12 inchers

By the way I preffer lapzilla, simply because I would never want to put a laptop called big gay Al on my lap... I'd just feel pretty uncomfortable.

Yeah, there is so much to learn when you get your first laptop, I will be getting the 12 incher as my first

.

-Owl

Graymalkin · Jan 17, 2003, 03:28 PM

Here's a quick and dirty primer about Lithium ion batteries that I hope will be helpful to some people.

Lithium ion batteries work by a process called intercalation or the rocking chair mechanism. Lithium ions in a liquid electrolyte move back and forth between two electrodes in the battery as the battery is charged and discharged. The electrodes are made of carbonaceous and metal oxide materials, the metal oxide in common lithium ion batteries is cobalt oxide.

What makes Li batteries expensive and heavy is the fact they have to be packed into relatively heavy cylindrical cans because the electrolyte needs to be hermetically sealed. Packing in such a way, especially in multi-cell packs like a laptop or camera battery reduces the battery's overall energy density meaning less playtime for your Powerbook. The production of a single Li-ion cell is pretty complex and costly in addition to the mass of the containment materials. Cobalt oxide is also a very unfriendly material which happens to be fairly expensive.

Two advances made relatively recently have improved the Li-ion technology a great deal. The first of these is the lithium-polymer battery. Instead of the electrolyte, electrodes, and foil packaging of the battery are sandwiched in long rolls, like laminating the battery's working components. The metal oxides us polymer cells are much cheaper and environmentally friendly than cobalt oxide and the rolls can be made very flexible and thin so can be packaged in very oddly shaped forms. Also every component of these batteries is solid, including the electrolyte. This means no expensive and prohitive sealing process.

Prismatic Li-ion batteries work similarly to their older cylindrical cousins but are packaged in a rectangular form factor. Their wrapping method is simpler and lighter than cylindrical wrapping making them much cheaper to produce than cylindrical cell batteries. For overall volume prismatic cells have a higher energy efficiency but a lower energy density. To be lighter and cheaper they sacrifice capacity because their electrode/electrolyte density ends up being lower.

Of these three types the most robust is the Li-polymer battery type. It is the safest to handle and deal with, the lightest, and has the best energy density per volume. Prismatic cells are less efficient than polymer cells but are far cheaper to produce. Cylindrical cell Li batteries fit in the middle of the two providing decent capacity for a fair price.

Why then isn't Apple jumping all over the Li-polymer batteries in all their portable products? Cost. They are one of the more expensive rechargable battery technologies on the market not because of their material cost but low production volume as yet. Per watt/hour Li-polymers are pretty expensive.

Apple is using Li-polymer batteries in the iPod because for the volume they provide the most electrical umph. Because they only need to store about 1200mAh they aren't prohibitively expensive to use in the iPod. A small amount of juice will power an iPod for more than 9 hours, I do this routinely. With the iPod the power philosophy was likely: spend more on the battery to get the most time out of a single battery charge no matter the cost (since it is fairly low).

The monster 17" Powerbook is an entirely different story. After the descision was made to stick a 17" screen on that thing the power question was probably more like: ok we need to keep the weight of this beat under 7 pounds but also need to have it last on the battery within the ballpark of our other laptops. A Li-polymer battery might have been the first choice but at more than $2 per watt/hour off the factory floor ($140 factory cost in large quantities which is very expensive) it was not a very pragmatic choice. A cylindrical cell Li-ion battery like the rest of their laptops use would have been comparable in price but not in weight. The 17" PB would have been a bit over 7 pounds which puts it in the "luggable" catagory of portable. So at the cost of battery life the prismatic cell Li-ion was most likely chosen, cost effective with a decent amount of cell power but not so heavy desks and hip bones would creak under its weight. For a comparison, the 14" iBook has the same capacity battery as the 17" PB, the iBook's lab time is 6 hours, the PB's is 4.5, that is a difference of an hour and a half and .9 pounds.

jamez bond · Jan 17, 2003, 03:51 PM

I agree with almost everything you say...
However (and other people may prove me wrong on this one), there are no pure Litium polymer batteries on the market per today...is it?
Well, there are, but I [think] that at the moment, these are in fact a Lit-Ion-polymer cell. (Ion-electrolyte)
The Li-Polymer would need a considerably higher operating temperature (like around 60DegC)...no?
Some gel electrolyte has been added to the polymer battery to increase the conductivity.
In this way, they can take the sudden powersurge we often find in new high tech products.

I think this is the general reason for a slow start for li-Polymer batteries in handheld products.

Considering this, they might actually be great for the Ti's....finally we can use that heat for something!

Graymalkin · Jan 17, 2003, 05:11 PM

You're correct. A pure dry polymer cell isn't conductive enough to allow for the really high amp bursts of power which are really required for many applications. Acceptable levels of conductivity in the polymers are only reached at temperatures around 60?C which isn't really going to work in portable electronics.

Current Li-polymers are hybrid designs, they package a gelled electrolyte in the battery's film layers to increase conductivity, this is how the battery of the iPod works. Lots of work is being done to find disulfide polymers or similar polymers that will have high conductivity at room temperature or in low temperature environments. IIRC the first production volume versions of pure dry polymer batteries are expected around 2005.

If production woes could be worked out, one of Li-polymer battery's biggest problems right now, I would love to see after market batteries available for devices of all sorts. The energy density would be similar to that of regular Li-ion batteries but the weight would be signifigantly reduced. A half pound off one of the new 12" Powerbooks would be pretty sweet. A four pound laptop that was fully functional and could play Quake 3 or RtCW for an hour would make for quite an impressive package, though an expensive one.

jamez bond · Jan 17, 2003, 07:04 PM

spot on grey...

photoeditor · Jan 17, 2003, 08:02 PM

No one has mentioned the role of OS X and battery life claims. I'm curious to know if Apple's claim of five hours for the TiBook is for booting in OS 9. We know that the new claims of five hours for the 12 and 4.5 for the 17 are for booting in OS X. If Apple's TiBook claim is for OS 9, then we can assume the new machines are more energy efficient than the old; if Apple's TiBook claim is for OS X, we can assume their claim for the new machines is hopelessly optimistic.

I will say that the one time I booted my GHz TiBook into 9 fully charged, the battery meter read something like 5 hours and 40 minutes. I have never seen estimated power remaining at more than four hours in OS X.

Any answers?

jamez bond · Jan 17, 2003, 08:14 PM

Never been close to those figures!
Running Pure Jaguar on my Ti667DVI.

I have never seen batterylife close to manufacturers estimation on any electronic product. Maybe they are trying to trick us!
maybe it's all a big conspiracy!

Avon · Jan 19, 2003, 02:29 AM

Im getting 1:40 on my TiBook 500 runing 10.2.3. Using the Automatic power saver mode. Is this way to low? Should I go out and get a new battery?

Superchicken · Jan 19, 2003, 03:16 AM

Other than lemon batteries what would be the reason why laptops can get less work done on a battery over time?
I know with traditional rechargables they can develop a memory where they stop charging after a certain point and the best way to get past this is to run it dry and recharge and continue doing that... what is the case for Li Ion Batteries?

(I wanna know how to take care of my 12 incher the best I can

)

ngrundy · Jan 19, 2003, 06:15 AM

I get 3 hours out of my TiG4-1GHz in 'normal usage' web browsing, music playing , file copy stuff.

I get 5 hours to 5:20 with a full charge in lectures, sound off, networking off (a location profile with no network interfaces enabled in it) and screen at minimum brightness. having the hdd set to spin down and reduced cpu power. This is perfectly good for taking notes in word and powerpoint.

if i have my airport enabled, rendezous and what not with ichat

in the same lecture then the battery is down to about 4:30.

I'm an OSX only person. I came from windows/unix and want nothing to do with os9

seanyepez · Jan 19, 2003, 06:50 AM

Originally posted by Avon:
Im getting 1:40 on my TiBook 500 runing 10.2.3. Using the Automatic power saver mode. Is this way to low? Should I go out and get a new battery?

That's fine if you're running CPU-intensive programs or using the optical drive at full brightness. Batteries do wear out over time. Did you ever get any longer than that when the machine was new?

Apple now sells 61-watt-hour battery packs found in the latest release of TiBooks which are fully comptabile with your older machine. With a little more than 20% more juice and newer cells, your machine should be able to get a good three hours of battery life.

Cipher13 · Jan 19, 2003, 06:53 AM

People claim this is a 'portable', not a 'laptop', when justifying the size; why should it need amazing battery life, then, I ask?

seanyepez · Jan 19, 2003, 07:07 AM

Batteries are generally a good thing. They allow you to work during a power outage, take your computer to other rooms without bringing along an AC adapter, and allow you to have your data with you wherever you are, a press of a latch release button away.

The 17-inch PowerBook is a portable, but at the same time, it's become standard that even desktop replacement notebooks feature batteries. The only notebook I've really seen that doesn't have a battery is the "Hugebee" series from Elitegroup, notebooks that weigh a back-breaking ten pounds and feature desktop processing power.

The more battery life you have, the longer you can work on an airplane or at Starbucks. The battery on a notebook with its screen as its claim to fame should definitely have enough juice to play through a full-length DVD movie.

Superchicken · Jan 19, 2003, 12:05 PM

Hmm... what are some of the things to do to save battery life while in class? IE turn down brightness on screen, don't use the optical drive, run in low power mode, tell the hard drive to spin down... anything else?

issa · Jan 19, 2003, 01:28 PM

Hmm... what are some of the things to do to save battery life while in class? IE turn down brightness on screen, don't use the optical drive, run in low power mode, tell the hard drive to spin down... anything else?

If you have an AirPort card installed, one more is to make sure you turn off AirPort.

ngrundy · Jan 19, 2003, 06:21 PM

Originally posted by Superchic[k]en:
Hmm... what are some of the things to do to save battery life while in class? IE turn down brightness on screen, don't use the optical drive, run in low power mode, tell the hard drive to spin down... anything else?

lets try and do a list with this fancy vB script stuff...

turn screen down so only one notch is left
in a custom power profile enable "put hard disk to sleep when ever possable"
set cpu to reduced mode
create a location profile with all interfaces unticked
mute sound (effectivly turns the audio system off)
have all your apps and docs open before you walk into the lecture
put the sucker to sleep during breaks

Superchicken · Jan 19, 2003, 07:58 PM

So in otherwords have all your stuff in the RAM?

Would it be better if I'm gona need multiple files to have them all open and then go in, even if it means I take up a fair bit of RAM with em... does the RAM draw more power deppending on how much is in it?

I take it this could be a good reason to max out one's RAM?

Over Achiever · Jan 19, 2003, 08:13 PM

How exactly can you force stuff to be in RAM...say you want iTunes or Word or something to run from RAM. How can you do that?

Mac Zealot · Jan 19, 2003, 08:23 PM

tis' called ramdisk.

You can do other things like plug in a BIG usb drive (512mb I say), with all of your files/maybe programs on it and just use that.

I *think* usb drives use less power anyway, and if you can find something that's self powered you're even better off! (ipod with the cable that DOESN'T have power pins

)

That way you use the hard drive... well... never.

And maybe have an extra battery

ngrundy · Jan 19, 2003, 08:34 PM

it's not about 'putting things into ram' or 'having a ram disk'

it's about having every thing loaded so the least ammount of time is spent with the hard disk spinning and seaking data.

It's the same with a sony minidisc, the unit will spin up the MD, read about 5 mins of music and then stop the MD spinning again and just stream the music from internal ram.

Keeping a disk spinning at 4200rpm in the case of a laptop takes power, power that could be better used powering your LCD and keeping the system running

Over Achiever · Jan 19, 2003, 08:38 PM

What's Ramdisk? This sounds like what I've been looking for. Is there a PC version?

seanyepez · Jan 19, 2003, 08:51 PM

Yes.

www.download.com

Applications from there let you create virtual drives from physical memory.

I think RAM disks create only diminishing returns. I would just settle for reduced brightness, CPU speed, and network connectivity to save 90% of what I could potentially save by doing all of the aforementioned and creating a RAM disk.

Mac OS 9 had a RAM disk function. I'm not sure that OS X has a manual RAM disk setting you could fiddle with.

schalliol · Jan 20, 2003, 12:02 AM

iPods work great for these specific tasks, just like the MD as referred to above, not only that it pre-caches. very smart. I'm using much of the 1GB of RAM in my PowerBook, so I don't know how a RAM disk would be that great. I did enjoy using one on my PowerBook 165c, as it really made it faster.