Battery life since Installing panther ...

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xarcom

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I was wondering if anyone else has noticed their battery life to be shorter after installing Panther ?? I'm using an ibook G3 500 w/ 256 MB ram and I'm at 1:20-1:35 at Longuest battery life settings...

Is this normal ? I used to get at least 2:00 - 2:30 on 10.1.5 ?

Could a few people post their battery times on Panther with either ibooks or powerbooks ? I'd like to rule out the possibility that my battery for my ibook2 is losing its charge...

Thanks,

Xarcom
 
Did you have jaguar in the middle of 10.1 and 10.3, or you migrated from 10.1 to 10.3?

Is that your first battery still in that ibook?

I got roughly 4 hours from the 1 ghz pb rev.b in 10.2. Now I get up to 4,5 hours in light use. (i took the battery away for the upgrade time).

Does the battery charge drop from 100 to 0 smoothly, or is there e.g. a drop from 20 (or any other % ) to 0 % (and sudden frozed sleep) ?
 
I went from 10.1.5 to 10.3... great improvement.. but battery life of 1 hrs is nuts... Sometimes it goes down slowly and then suddenly just sleeps. but just before sleeping the battery was at 60 %...

If I do any interesting use of the laptop.. (compiling something or actively using it..) my battery life can go to 20 minutes..

It might be a h/w issue... althought I'd be interested to know someone else with an ibook2 500 and hear what his/her battery life is with panther..
 
try x-charge, http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/15982

it will follow the charge and give you graphics of the behaviour.

i had the battery life problem with ibook on 10.2.something. it started going to 0 from 60 % then higher .. the last time i used it it lasted about 15 mins.
i got a replacement for it from apple (under warranty).

anyway, it's good for the battery if you recalibrate it about every 2 weeks. make full charge, unplug it, let run till it goes to sleep (to 0 %).. then to make it stronger effect, plug in the powercord for a short period of time, to boot the system to single user mode (restart, hold apple and s keys after reboot) where it can't monitor the battery charge. let it run till it shuts down. restart the computer, charge it till it's full. that's now in the reccomendations of the new powerbooks at least. and if you need to store the mac for over 4-5 months, full charge the battery, and store it separately. the calibration should be done since the mac is new, and i doubt if (well, if that will help it) it was in your ibooks instructions when you got it. then, the batteries do have a limited life, so some unfortunate batteries die after 6 months of use, some in 1, 2, 3 years of use ...
 
The following worked for me. I don't know exactly if this is a recommended procedure but it fixed my battery problem.

After installing Panther, my PowerBook was forced into sleep mode at about 30 percent capacity without any warning. I had this before and I succeeded to get a replacement battery, but this time I tried to fix the problem myself before calling AppleCare - and it worked!

Here is what I did:

1) I charged the battery to 100 percent, then switched off the Book and reset the PMU.

The procedure to reset the PMU is described here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449

2) I unplugged the AC adaptor from the Book, then I switched the Book on. I let it drain the battery until it switched off by itself.

3) Now the important part: I had it stay in sleep mode for another 10 hours or so, so that the battery was drained a little more during sleep.

I assume that the PMU or the batt's internal controller were confused about when the battery was at 0 percent. Draining it even more after it switched off cured the problem for me, now I have around 4hrs with a full battery again, doing editing/compiling/testing with max cpu and max display backlight. Of course, watching a DVD shortens this to around 2,5 hours.

Hope this helps :)
 
I would recommend rhg's suggestions. I had a similar problem with my PB 15" 1.25 Ghz when I got it new. I spoke with an Apple technician over the phone and basically I reset the PMU. I was getting 1.5 hours before and over 3 hours afterwards.
 
Just 2:55, macnewguy?
Are you playing games? I get easily 4 hours.
Airport is running all the time; ok, am not opening and closing apps, they are most of the time opened; browsing; office word and excel; sherlock; icq and mail
 
Arg ! My battery is sooooooooo dying.... either that or I haven't found the right solution yet... Everytime I discharge the battery... the capacity goes down significantly... Using a few commands I've checked my battery capacity that was at 1200 Ah (which should be at 3500 Ah) and its now down to 689 Ah.... battery time is down to 30 minutes... I think the battery is either dying or the battery's memory is seriously screwed... In any case I'm still trying rhg's idea.... but this sucks since I didn't have this problem before upgrading... a New battery is quite pricy even for a student (160 $ CAD).. and I wouldn't want it to get corrupted again if I get a new one...

Anyways... hopefully I'll have better news later.
 
Try a few times to fully charge and let it go as down as it can (untill it really shuts down) .. the same with rhg's suggestions. it may need 2 or 3 times to be done before it shows any difference. Hopefully it will.
 
xarcom, how old is that battery? I ask because you can get a replacement from Apple within one year after purchase.
 
I haven't tried the solutions offered above yet, but the max I get with my TiBook 667 G4/512 Mb RAM since installing Panther is 35 minutes!

Right now, the icon on the toolbar says charged, and if I pull out the lead, it says calculating, then 35mins.
 
rhg my ibook is from 2001... thus the battery is no longer under garanty... :( if it where I would have returned it by now ehhehe..

The thing pissing me off is that the battery was fine pre-Panther ... it was old and probably lost some of its charge... (2 hrs instead of 3) but it wasn't 30 minutes..

Jabberwocky is obviously having the same problem I had... something in Panther just messed up my battery... now I've been discharging / recharging the battery in hopes of attaining at least 1:30 h ...

Its very odd.. I've had really weird results... the 4 times I discharged/recharged it actually lowered my battery capacity.. from 1200 Ah (1:20 h) -> 960 Ah (1 h)-> 740 Ah (0:40 h) -> 440 Ah (0:25 h) On the 5th time it was back to 750 Ah (0:50 h)...

What will the 6'th time do the the battery ? Tune in tonight to find out !
 
Whatever you do, DO NOT LET THE BATTERY RUN ALL THE WAY DOWN! That's an "old wives tale" that used to hold true years ago, but no longer.

Letting your battery run down will immediately sap the life out of a battery. You will notice that the battery doesn't last as long on the very next charge. And if you continue to let it run down around 3 or 4 times, your battery will eventually fail to hold a charge much longer than an hour.

This information is not BS, you can get it from the battery manufacturer.
 
After my experience with the X.2.4 I always remove the battery with installs or updates.

2.4 toasted my battery. I tried all the PMU update stuff over and over. In the end I had to shell out for a new battery, I had a clamshell desktop for a month until the dealer got me a new one.

Never again!
 
not done the PMU reset, but I have just drained the battery and recharged it as per the apple info article.
Now when I remove the power lead, time is up from 35 mins to 1 hr 10 mins.
Although as I type this, it has already dropped down to 45 mins and I have not been typing for 25 minutes!!!

Still not much though... so I have decided to try it again :mad:
 
MacGizmo, if you never let your Powerbook / iBook (litium) battery run down, that does not increase the battery life either. The recalibrating procedure may not suit to all kind of batteries, but at least on the modesl using lithium (powerbooks etc), the recalibrating is a suggested procedure by Apple, and printed clearly in the handbook / instructions.

I had a battery issue that occurred while using 10.2.4, but investigating it 10.2.4 was not the only update where that occurred. The iBook started to go to forced sleep (or randomly shut down) whenever the battery was in 60 % charge .. and it slowly worsened, in a month or so to not last in the last use any longer than 15 minutes. I got a replacement battery for it being still under warranty, but now anytime I need to install an OS or any major upgrade (lets say 10.3. > 10.3.1 or > 10.3.2) I take the battery away before I do so. If the recalibration would result in a shorter battery life, I see no reason why Apple would be reccomending it now. I don't believe they want to give out more replacement batteries than they did when the similar issues occorred in 10.2.4 (or other 10.2.x).
 
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