A newbie question on battery indicator

macnovice · February 26, 2004 12:07PM

When I bought my Powerbook G4 in December 2003, the battery indicator showed 5 hours plus at 100%. Recently, I've noticed only 3.35 hours when fully charged. Is that a problem with the battery, the battery charger, the software that calculates battery usage or a combination of them? Is there anything I can do to correct this problem aside from buying a new battery?

Also, I've inadvertently turned off the battery indicator from being displayed. How can I turn it back on again?

Please advice and thank you.

Frank

aquatic · February 26, 2004 12:16PM

No it's because Apple batteries SUCK. Also did you install the "Battery Update 1.1"? That freakin update KILLED my Battery on my nice new PowerBook G4 12" rev 1 which was just half a year old. My battery time went from 4 hours to around an hour with ALL network stuff even modem off, the CPU slowed down, and the disk set to sleep, and screen dim after 1 minute. And Apple's battery policy sucks. I think I am stuck with shit battery life until I get a new laptop next year or the year after that. Not cool. Not cool at all. Yes I tried resetting the PMU and also Pulling the battery out, hitting the indicator, waiting 30 seconds, putting it back in, and powering all the way up and back down and up and back down, like the Apple rep on the phone said. Didn't do jack. I am wondering if 10.3.3 will fix this or if it's hardware. I'm pretty sure before I made the leap to Panther and BU Update it was around 4 hours.

pb · February 26, 2004 2:23PM

Oh, you have some serious trouble here. Sorry to hear that. I too applied the Battery Update in my first generation 12" Powerbook and nothing strange happened. I am under 10.2.8 though. Are you sure that a completely fresh system installation would not resolve the problem?

EDIT: I am right now on battery. The power indicator showed a 15% loss in 30 min of usage: display brightness at 6, Airport on, Bluetooth on, many applications open, all of the physical memory occupied resulting in 8 swap files total, browsing, checking Mail, typing (in Safari this means many CPU cycles), scrolling, magnifying the Dock, etc. It seems more or less normal to me.

pb · February 26, 2004 2:27PM

Quote:

Originally posted by macNovice

Also, I've inadvertently turned off the battery indicator from being displayed. How can I turn it back on again?

Please advice and thank you.

Frank

Frank, I don't know exactly how to it in Panther, I will tell you how to do it in Jaguar (it should be something similar).

In System Preferences, you go simply to Energy Saver and you click the check box "Show battery status in the menu bar".

ast3r3x · February 26, 2004 2:46PM

Copy and paste sucker into a terminal window and tell me what it says...

Code:

ioreg -l | grep -i IOBatteryInfo |more

Does anyone know if the capacity is supposed to change, I looked it up in an old thread and mine was 3205, but now is 3260. I am still sad my AluBook 15" is that low and most peoples are 4000 or so... that is only 82% of the battery life it should be! I will complain about this when I send it in for white spot repair... haven't been able to make myself go without my computer for a week yet

sonofsylvanus · February 26, 2004 2:53PM

Quote:

Originally posted by ast3r3x

Copy and paste sucker into a terminal window and tell me what it says...

Code:

ioreg -l | grep -i IOBatteryInfo |more

...

Mines 3688. What does it mean? Just a numeric measure of max capacity?

curiousuburb · February 26, 2004 2:56PM

Quote:

Originally posted by PB

Frank, I don't know exactly how to it in Panther, I will tell you how to do it in Jaguar (it should be something similar).

In System Preferences, you go simply to Energy Saver and you click the check box "Show battery status in the menu bar".

same in Panther

versiontracker has some Battery apps that help track performance

X-charge and others have been used by some before for more accurate feedback on true state

YMMV

macnovice · February 26, 2004 5:50PM

Quote:

Originally posted by PB

Frank, I don't know exactly how to it in Panther, I will tell you how to do it in Jaguar (it should be something similar).

In System Preferences, you go simply to Energy Saver and you click the check box "Show battery status in the menu bar".

Yes, PB. That did the trick. Thank you very much!

I have a lot of learning to do in Mac.

Frank

macnovice · February 26, 2004 5:57PM

Quote:

Originally posted by curiousuburb

same in Panther

versiontracker has some Battery apps that help track performance

X-charge and others have been used by some before for more accurate feedback on true state

YMMV

Thank you curiousuburb.

An apple rep gave me this URL below to retrieve the versiontracker but their website is either down or not working.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/15982

So, I don't know what to make of it? Can you verify the URL please?

Thank you.

Frank

curiousuburb · February 26, 2004 6:32PM

that link seems fine... if not just visit versiontracker pick your OS, and search for 'Battery' or 'Charge' and you should discover X-Charge and other tools.

click the 'download now' icon and a new page will kick off an automated d/l

check the readme, then run the app.

you'll get a graph of charge over time.

run a few full drain/charge cycles (squeeze it to empty if you can) to profile accurately

d2kagw · February 27, 2004 5:08PM

I have a new PB 15",

my battery life is meant to be up to 4.5 hours, and right now im strugling to get over 2 hours!!! it sucks !!!

cosmonut · February 27, 2004 5:58PM

My battery capacity is 4089. Woot!

A newbie question on battery indicator

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