Why is 10.2.3's Energy Saver Still Dysfunctional?

[Big Mac]

As an iBook user, I'm continually puzzled by the fact that through three updates 10.2's Energy Saver still isn't totally functional. How so you ask? Well, try to work with the pre-sets in the Optimization menu. Logically, I should be able to set separate optimization types for the battery power and AC adapter configurations. Let's say that I want Best Battery Life for the battery configuration and Highest Performance for the AC configuration. With the AC menu choice selected, I select Highest Performance. Then I switch to battery and select Best Battery Life. When I switch back to the AC setting, I find that it has been changed to Best Battery Life; if I change it back, then the battery power setting changes to Highest Performance too. In short, the most recent preset setting is applied to both. I can't imagine that I'm the only one experiencing this issue, so why hasn't Apple fixed it yet? This problem certainly isn't significant, but it's a nuisance nonetheless.

[MCQ]

Heh, I must be reading this wrong or misunderstanding you. You want highest power when connected to an outlet, and best battery life when using battery? Choose the Automatic setting.

[Quarem]

I believe that the Highest Performance and Best Battery Life presets are hard coded, if you want you to make your own presets use Custom. Or Automatic as previously suggested.

[Aquatic]

Is it unusual to watch Jaguar eat 1% of battery every 10 seconds? I'm NOT kidding. It says "reserver battery power" at just below 60% too. OS X SUCKS! (battery)

[MCQ]

Um, maybe you have a bad battery?

[Jonathan]

I see it too.

40% left and it says 0%.

Got another hour or so left.

:/

[trevorM]

[quote]Originally posted by Aquatic:
<strong>Is it unusual to watch Jaguar eat 1% of battery every 10 seconds? I'm NOT kidding. It says "reserver battery power" at just below 60% too. OS X SUCKS! (battery)</strong><hr></blockquote>

Thats a bug I think with regards to your reserve power message at 60%.

See Apple Tech docos for that

[Aquatic]

I don't think OS X even with reduced processor speed and dimmed screen gets over an hour on my iBook. Must OS X always be doomed to get less battery than 9? I thought since OS X pages out more it'd use less RAM and therefore get better battery... <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

[Defiant]

[quote]Originally posted by Aquatic:
<strong>I thought since OS X pages out more it'd use less RAM and therefore get better battery... :confused: </strong><hr></blockquote>

and therefore the harddrive...duh! :p

[JLL]

[quote]Originally posted by Aquatic:
<strong>I don't think OS X even with reduced processor speed and dimmed screen gets over an hour on my iBook. Must OS X always be doomed to get less battery than 9? I thought since OS X pages out more it'd use less RAM and therefore get better battery... :confused: </strong><hr></blockquote>

What kind of iBook do you have? A clamshell?

[Defiant]

for those people who get a very short battery life in their 'books:

<a href="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449" target="_blank">PowerBook and iBook: Resetting Power Management Unit (PMU)
</a>

:)

[Aquatic]

So that uses more battery defiant? Does 10.2 have RAM disk implemented yet? I wonder if putting your swap file on that would help? :D

Yes Jonathan I see that 0% bug too. Thanks for that link Defiant I'll try this later today.

[Defiant]

[quote]Originally posted by Aquatic:
<strong>So that uses more battery defiant? Does 10.2 have RAM disk implemented yet? I wonder if putting your swap file on that would help? :D </strong><hr></blockquote>

brad ? could you please ? I'm not confident to explain it myself.

[Asaph]

Wow, I dont understand all these battery woes... I have a new 14" iBook 800 and I consistantly squeeze at -least- 4 hours. 5-6 if im not gaming... ::shrugs:: guess I got lucky? :)

[off/lang]

[quote]Originally posted by Asaph:
<strong>Wow, I dont understand all these battery woes... I have a new 14" iBook 800 and I consistantly squeeze at -least- 4 hours. 5-6 if im not gaming... ::shrugs:: guess I got lucky? :) </strong><hr></blockquote>

Yeah, I have a new Powerbook 1GHz and I've gotten six hours (I left it unplugged doing nothing...) but, I usually get 3-4 watching a dvd, or doing just light work... It really saved me when my flight was delayed by 4 hours. I just played Sim Cinema (old school!) for the whole time.

[cowerd]

[quote]Does 10.2 have RAM disk implemented yet? I wonder if putting your swap file on that would help?<hr></blockquote>
No RAM Disk, and to put your swapfile on a RAM disk it would have to be created at boot, before your swapfile is defined and created. Unless you're hitting Photoshop or some ungodly crappy piece of code, with enough RAM you shouldn't even be hitting the HD.

[ijerry]

I have a 500 mhz ibook, with OS X installed and have not noticed any of the bugs you all are saying either. I haven't done anything special, other than download updates...MMmm, well good luck. I guess it is just the luck of the draw, But I am at 4-5 hours with both of my batteries. Good luck.

[drewprops]

If you want Brad to weigh in you might want to email him to get his attention....I know we all think that he's the omnipresent god of OS X, but even Brad Almighty has to be alerted to events from time to time!

I'm an iBook-ist with a rapidly draining batt too, by the by. I tried the remedy before and still find that the battery plummets like a rock regardless of settings.

OS 9.x it ain't when it comes to batt life!

D

[Brad]

Haha, I have been summoned!!

http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/.Pictures/summon-brad.gif
&lt;insert lame Final Fantasy joke&gt; ;)

Anyhow, sorry guys, but I really don't have a solution for your battery woes. I don't own an Apple portable nor do I have someone nearby that does. My best suggestion is to try the link that Defiant posted above. It seems to have had success with a number of users.

As for OSX's swap file, putting that on a RAM disk would be a ridiculous idea. Basically you're saying that when the system runs out of RAM and needs to hit the drive for memory that it should hit the RAM disk instead. Uhh, does anyone else see the problem here? If it runs out of RAM... it has nowhere else to go! Get it? The solution here is to just buy more RAM and pack as much as you can into your Mac.

[Aquatic]

Hehe...I was tired and I still am! But my iBook just died. In X and 9 it got 10 mins on battery then died. Then I got home just now, plugged it in, and powered it up. It was in 9 I remembered so I hit the X key, and ended up with a flashing system folder... And I left my boot disks at URI. %)(@&#(%*&!!! So I'll try "resetting the PMU" later tonight and hopefully it'll work, since batteries are expensive.

[ 01-01-2003: Message edited by: Aquatic ]</p>

[Defiant]

and ?

[Amorph]

RAM draws a small amount of power to "remember" what is stored in its cells (which are capacitors in DRAM that discharge quickly - so they have to be refreshed constantly). However, there are no moving parts.

A hard disk, on the other hand, is one or more gigantic (from a circuit's point of view) physical platters that have to be accelerated up to a high speed, kept there, and accessed by physically moving immense (to a circuit) arms. The amount of current required to spin up and power a moving device of considerable size dwarfs the amount of current required to keep a bunch of tiny capacitors full with a very small charge.

If you really want to save battery life, stuff as much RAM as you can manage to into your laptop. No matter how much of it there is it will be markedly more power efficient than a busy hard drive. OS X will be better able to use it, as well, since it not only uses the hard drive for virtual memory, it uses RAM as a virtual hard drive (i.e., it caches recently accessed files in memory).

[ 01-03-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>

[Aquatic]

Resetting the PMU didn't work. My iBook's 1.5 years old, the store told me the battery was dead. Is it or are they just trying to sell me a $139 battery?

[Amorph]

If you've used your battery heavily, that's not an unrealistic lifespan.

[Aquatic]

Yep I guess so. Oh well, thanks for the info anyway.

[trowa]

I have a TiBook 1 GHz Superdrive 1 GB RAM. I got it in Nov. About two weeks or so after they were available. For the past 2 weeks I've been discharging my battery through everyday use, and recharging and so forth. My energy saver settings are set to automatic, with processor performance set to reduced. My display brightness settings are about 4 notches down. I still only only get about 2.5 hours, sometimes it jumps to 3 but then readily lowers itself to about 2:45 minutes. The most I've been able to squeeze out of it by doing the discharge thing. I even timed it with a watch and it is the same time.

Is my battery not operating properly? I've been doing some research and some people on macnn get about 2.5 hours while others get 4-5 hrs (these are 867/1Ghz Tibook owners). I have Applecare, will Apple replace my battery? I mean it is functioning properly but it just doesn't hold a charge as well as most other batteries. I guess I will try reseting the PMU, but I don't think it will do a difference.

any help will be appreciated.

thanks

[RazzFazz]

[quote]Originally posted by trowa:
<strong>My display brightness settings are about 4 notches down. I still only only get about 2.5 hours, sometimes it jumps to 3 but then readily lowers itself to about 2:45 minutes.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Try lowering your display brightness further. Assuming all GHz TiBook displays are roughly comparable, you should be able to reduce it to 5 notches or so and still get a good enough picture. This, in my experience, makes a big difference in battery life.

Bye,
RazzFazz

[Tom Mornini]

[quote]Originally posted by trowa:
<strong>I have a TiBook 1 GHz Superdrive 1 GB RAM. I got it in Nov. About two weeks or so after they were available. For the past 2 weeks I've been discharging my battery through everyday use, and recharging and so forth. My energy saver settings are set to automatic, with processor performance set to reduced. My display brightness settings are about 4 notches down. I still only only get about 2.5 hours, sometimes it jumps to 3 but then readily lowers itself to about 2:45 minutes. The most I've been able to squeeze out of it by doing the discharge thing. I even timed it with a watch and it is the same time.

Is my battery not operating properly? I've been doing some research and some people on macnn get about 2.5 hours while others get 4-5 hrs (these are 867/1Ghz Tibook owners). I have Applecare, will Apple replace my battery? I mean it is functioning properly but it just doesn't hold a charge as well as most other batteries. I guess I will try reseting the PMU, but I don't think it will do a difference.

any help will be appreciated.

thanks</strong><hr></blockquote>

Are you using Airport?

Airport (and all 802.11 implementation) uses a lot of power.

[Booker T Rat]

On the subject of Energy Saver, this is something I read at another place:

[quote]This weekend I was installing CHUD (packaged with Developer Tools) on my brand new, just out of the box, 1Ghz PowerBook. When I went to use the CPU preference pane, I notice the 1mb L3 cache was not enabled. I tried to enable it but it wouldn't. I then downloaded SpeedRun and saw my benchmark numbers where lower than a 500Mhz G4. Something wasn't right…It appears that Apple disables the L3 cache as part of its Energy Saving process on PowerBooks (perhaps iBooks as well). <hr></blockquote>

You can read the full (short) article <a href="http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030103064631426#comments" target="_blank">here.</a>

[trowa]

I tried the PMU reset and lowered my display brightness to about half. Airport is also off. the battery got a little better around 3 hrs. Nothing like what I hear other people are getting. I am going to keep discharging the battery and recharging for a couple of more days and if it still displays 3 hrs I will send the battery back to Apple.

thanks for all your help.

happy new year everyone!

[Kickaha]

One thing I've noticed is a spurious "You are now on reserve power, please plug in your PowerBook soon" message when waking from sleep. The power use in the few short seconds after opening the lid (Pismo PowerBook, 3+ yrs old, original battery) is enough that it fools the power management into thinking "Well heck, at *this* rate we're going to drain the sucker in just a couple of minutes!" and up pops the erroneous dialog.

It's harmless, but annoying when the battery shows 70% full, and it tells me it's about to run out. :p