The Powerbook 800 Mhz only lasts 1.5 hours on OS X?

nukeninnukenin
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I thought it was just me that noticed it when I test drove the 800 Mhz PB at Fry's. It's is frigid fast!



However, is it really true the battery only lasts 1.5 hrs. under OS X?



<a href="http://www.barefeats.com/pb8b.html"; target="_blank">http://www.barefeats.com/pb8b.html</a>;

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 16
    detahdetah Posts: 57member
    1.5 hours? hahaha, that is pathetic.
  • Reply 2 of 16
    purephazedpurephazed Posts: 33member
    um... bare feats has good detail on the 800...

    but i got 2.1 hours out of my battery watching a dvd... fyi ... it's a great machine... i very happy and this is my 3 powerbook...

    300 wallstreet

    400 pismo

    800 dvi



    cheers
  • Reply 3 of 16
    trevormtrevorm Posts: 841member
    Hey I got my TiBook just over a week and half ago and noticed that the battery only lasts around 2.5Hrs (So it says in the power meter) but I feel I get a 'lil more out of it.
  • Reply 4 of 16
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    battery life in OS X has never been impressive on any Apple portable.
  • Reply 5 of 16
    zozo Posts: 3,117member
    strange you should say that Applenut. My iBook 14inch (with 6hours of advertised battery life) actually lasted about 5 for me while doing some really light work (an occassional mp3, word typing, email, etc).



    This in OS X mind you
  • Reply 6 of 16
    ti xti x Posts: 32member
    So what??



    My Dell Latitude that my company forces me to use, gets less than 2hrs, and it is a PII.



    Gimme a break.
  • Reply 7 of 16
    andersanders Posts: 6,523member
    PUREPHAZED: I´m considering going from a Pismo 400 to the low end Ti in a year and since I expect it to be very indentical to todays high end: Is the new Ti in a completly new league compared to the Pismo? Does it make the pismo feel like a computer from another decade?



    [ 05-29-2002: Message edited by: Anders ]</p>
  • Reply 8 of 16
    hobbeshobbes Posts: 1,252member
    [quote]

    <strong> Is the new Ti in a completly new league compared to the Pismo? Does it make the pismo feel like a computer from another decade?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Yes. Give one a whirl at an Apple Store, or Apple-authorized retailer. You'll see.



    The new Ti is excellent.
  • Reply 9 of 16
    tigerwoods99tigerwoods99 Posts: 2,633member
    I thought us Macheads always used to shove it in PC user's faces about how PC laptops only got a couple hours while Mac laptops had FAR superior battery life. This is very sad if true. Makes me second guess getting a PBG4 now.
  • Reply 10 of 16
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    What about _OS 9_? Eh?

    OS X still sucks for portables. Energy Saver MIA, etc.



    So can someone post their OS 9 stats please? Thank you in advance.
  • Reply 11 of 16
    emaneman Posts: 7,204member
    [quote]Originally posted by TigerWoods99:

    <strong>I thought us Macheads always used to shove it in PC user's faces about how PC laptops only got a couple hours while Mac laptops had FAR superior battery life. This is very sad if true. Makes me second guess getting a PBG4 now.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Well if you need a laptop then what are you gunna do?
  • Reply 12 of 16
    nukeninnukenin Posts: 4member
    2.5 hrs. of battery watching DVD on OSX isn't bad; most desktop replacement PC laptops last around that time too. But I was just shocked by Barefeat's article that stated that the battery only lasted 1.5 hrs doing just simple stuff.



    [ 05-29-2002: Message edited by: Nukenin ]</p>
  • Reply 13 of 16
    airslufairsluf Posts: 1,861member
  • Reply 14 of 16
    murbotmurbot Posts: 5,262member
    This is all crap.



    I did a battery run down test on my new 667 tonight. I can't see the 800 getting half the run time of a 667 (according to BareFeats)



    My energy saving measures:



    Screen brightness set to 1/2 (still VERY readable at this level - I never keep it at full even plugged in)

    hard drive spin down\t5 min

    screen shut down\t5 min

    reduced processor speed



    I also had Airport running the whole time.



    Basically your usual internet/email/text editing kind of thing. I had the following applications running:



    iTunes

    Internet Explorer

    Entourage

    MSN Messenger

    TextEdit

    Graphic Converter



    So I was surfing the net with iTunes running constantly in background for the entire test. I edited a few digital photos of my new house to send off to my folks. Answered a few emails, chatted with a few friends. Cranked up the PowerBook when a good song came up. Farted around with the visuals a bit. Fired up Omni Outliner for the first time, tooled around with that. Installed TinkerTool and tweaked that a little. Organized some of my digital photos into folders, did a little "cleaning up" of a messy documents folder. Roamed around AI, MacNN, Ars, <a href="http://www.tsn.ca"; target="_blank">TSN</a>. Played with the bag builder at <a href="http://www.timbuk2.com"; target="_blank">Timbuk2</a>.



    I got the first low batter warning at 2 hr 47 minutes, and the system finally went to sleep after EXACTLY 3 hours, right to the minute.



    Not scientific, but probably pretty normal for the "internet/email/text editing" session Rob-Art Morgan talks about when he's testing his Ti Book. I left it twice, for 5 and 10 minutes. So it ran normal that first time, the second time it would have spun down the hard disk and shut off the screen after 5 minutes. A man has to pee, after all.



    I don't think my energy saving measures are drastic, either. I think you're foolish to max everything out like screen brightness, keep the hard drive spinning constantly, etc, when you're trying to get a decent battery run going. It's not like I needed full processor power to do what I was doing tonight...



    So I got 3 hours out of it. I have no idea how he only manages 1.5 hours with his machine. I also ran iTunes non-stop for the entire 3 hours, which is something I wouldn't always do. I'll try again another night with everything maxed right out and see what I get. I'm sure it'll be well over 2 hours though, I'm guessing 2.5 at least. My hard drive also didn't get a chance to spin down much like it would watching a DVD or something, I was moving stuff around and renaming files quite a bit in the Finder.



    Oh hell, I don't know if that's good or not, but there it is.



    [ 05-30-2002: Message edited by: murbot ]</p>
  • Reply 15 of 16
    trevormtrevorm Posts: 841member
    I appreciate what people are saying about batteries but I seem to hav great luck with my 800Mhz, as I said in my previous reply the power display says around 2.5Hrs when fully charged but I get around 3hrs in OSX, whats more I use Airport together with a fair number of apps running...



    ....Luck me I guess :cool:
  • Reply 16 of 16
    purephazedpurephazed Posts: 33member
    ANDERS: yes it is in a diferent league... i love my wallstreet and pismo .... but this laptop is just great... has everything i actually need ( except the bluetooth built in) but otherwise i think it the way to go...



    do it i really don't think that you will regret it...





    m
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