Dumb question...

solo

solo

Computer Hobbyist
When the iBook's battery is charging, is there a light that's supposed to be showing somewhere? I thought I'd read that some part of the wire spool, or something else glowed when the battery is charging (possibly I'm confusing this with the TiBook?). Just curious. I've noticed durations of only about 2.5 - 3.5 hours between charges (out of the reported 5 hours claimed by Apple); but other than that, I don't really have any concerns with my machine. I just love it.
 
If you want to get more time out of your iBook, turn down the monitor brightness. By keeping the monitor brightness as low as is practical, I've been able to squeeze 5 hours 20 mins out of a charge, whereas with the brightness at a middle level you'll only get three hours.
I mean, yes, the hard drive and optical drive have an impact, as well as sound and plugging in an optical mouse, etc. I've found the display brightness is THE thing. I've never bothered to turn the processor speed down just to try and save a few watts.
And yes, the glowing plug thing was a TiBook feature.
 
Thanks for the brightness-tip, i will try that. My battery life sucks big time. A already returned a battery to Apple, but a new battery got me the same result. Ill open a forum for this !
 
Yes... Thanks for the brightness tip. I feel very fortunate; my unit hasn't had any of the other problems that have been reported (dead pixels, weird trackpad, sound problems). I do use a trackball most of the time though.
 
I've recently been working on writing a novel, while on the road, and I've managed to top that personal best and get 5:30 in Word under OS 9 by doing the following:
- Turn off virtual memory (the system performs SO much better with VM off!)
- Load the spellcheck dictionaries into the ramdisk, or turn off spelling and grammar.
- Turn off sounds and animations.
This means that Word won't be calling on the hard disk
- Turn processor to better conservation, slower speed.
- When you start typing, put the disk to sleep immediately.
- Save MANUALLY every ten minutes and put the disk back to sleep.

This is not what I typically do, but it proves that Apple weren't lying about the five-hour battery life.
 
If you are running OSX you will probably only get 3.5 to 4 hours max no matter the conservations you try. X is no where near as energy efficient as 9 was. With the new upgrade to X.1 it is getting better. On my 400mhx Ti I got 5 hours on a single charge surfing the web with airport under X I get closer to 3.5 hours.
 
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