keith04 Posted September 12, 2005 Share Posted September 12, 2005 I know its only a small problem, especially when almost everything else in the OS is running flawlessly, but the battery life while running OSX is terrible. Its the only thing keeping me to switching to it as my primary OS. I can get up to 5 hours off a single charge under LINUX, but struggle to get 2 with my display turned all the way down under OSX. I have the options set under Power management to lower CPU speeds, and put the Display / Hard disks to sleep. I think the problem is that the CPU speed is not getting lowered when the comp is idle. Does anyone know if theres currently a way to get SpeedStep working on OSX, as I'm sure that would do a great deal to increase battery times. Thanks! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
weeguy Posted September 12, 2005 Share Posted September 12, 2005 Not sure about speedstep but someone mentioned turning off spotlight to prevent it from indexing your hard disk every so often. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-15545 Share on other sites More sharing options...
drjones Posted September 12, 2005 Share Posted September 12, 2005 I think the problem is that the CPU speed is not getting lowered when the comp is idle. Maybe your laptop doesn't have accelerated video and the CPU is handling all the video. That requires a lot of CPU, which translates to power consumtion. There's no way to turn on the acceleration without propers drivers, the only OSx86 video driver that works is the Intel 915G. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-15719 Share on other sites More sharing options...
cj Posted September 13, 2005 Share Posted September 13, 2005 I don't think it's the lack of video acceleration. Even if your screen isn't doing anything, it drains. I've even tried to 'sleep' where it turns off most stuff but the display, and it still drains the battery in a major way. I'm lucky to get 4.5hours out of two batteries when I normally would be pushing 9 hours. I think as a work around I can disable SpeedStep in BIOS and have it run at 600mhz all the time. I know it sounds weird, but apparently according to my BIOS disabling speedstep forces the CPU to lowest speed (I guess they put it in there for people without working speedstep control or it was safer than running at 2.0ghz the entire time....) I'm scared to see what OSX will run like at 600mhz forced. It runs blazingly fast on a 2.0ghz Pentium-M. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-15918 Share on other sites More sharing options...
k1n6w4r3z Posted September 13, 2005 Share Posted September 13, 2005 it's not a videocard issue on my portege r200 i have a intel 915 with drivers, qe and ci but anyway my battery life is very short. dind't try to monitorr the time difference between osx and xp but anyway there's a big difference between them. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-15927 Share on other sites More sharing options...
larrybird Posted September 13, 2005 Share Posted September 13, 2005 I'm actually getting about the same amount of time with my battery in XP and OS X. It's about an hour and a half for my Dell i5000. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-16128 Share on other sites More sharing options...
DellOsX Posted September 13, 2005 Share Posted September 13, 2005 ^^^ same with me I get around 2 and half hours or more on my Dell Inspiron 8200 without turning down anything. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-16133 Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcruzlara Posted September 13, 2005 Share Posted September 13, 2005 wow at least your batteries last a lot mine only lasts about an hour should i buy another one? i mean i used to get like 5 hours on xp but now i get like 2 1/2 u guys r lucky Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-16226 Share on other sites More sharing options...
larrybird Posted September 14, 2005 Share Posted September 14, 2005 It used to last 5 hours, but now only lasts 2 1/2 in XP and only an hour in OS X? Batteries decay over time and with use. If you want to last 5 hours, you'll have to buy a new battery. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-16342 Share on other sites More sharing options...
cj Posted September 15, 2005 Share Posted September 15, 2005 This is getting off topic. This has nothing to do with how much one's battery has decayed but simply the fact that OSX isn't using SpeedStep or other technologies to save battery life. My battery is 9 months old and still gets up to 9 hours in windows, my batteries are practically brand new. BTW, if you get the ACPI kext from Darwin you can load AppleACPIDisplay.kext and your screen will shut off properly. But the fan(s) and I assume CPU will continue to run. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-16566 Share on other sites More sharing options...
keith04 Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 BTW, if you get the ACPI kext from Darwin you can load AppleACPIDisplay.kext and your screen will shut off properly. But the fan(s) and I assume CPU will continue to run. Thanks for the tip... I'll try that when I go home this weekend... I guess we'll have to wait until OSX for Intel is farther in development to see the advantages of Intel SpeedStep. I was kinda hoping someone had figured out a way to get it working, but it doesnt sound like it... I havnt looked at the Darwin for Intel lately... does anyone know it it has SpeedStep support? If so, It should be as easy as copying over the *.kext folder to OSX... If nobody posts back, I'll probably look for that this weekend as well. Let you guys know when I do. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-16651 Share on other sites More sharing options...
keith04 Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 I just tried it, and it still doesnt put my display to sleep 'properly' (or maybe I just have a misunderstanding of what putting a display to sleep should do). I was under the impression that putting a display to sleep would turn it off, and save power. All the AppleACPIDisplay does for me is not display the pointer, and stop refreshing the display. I looked around for some speedstep extensions on the Darwin CD, but didnt see any... oh well... I'll probably have a 'real' mac in a year anyway keith Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-16788 Share on other sites More sharing options...
perium Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 Ive been looking for a way to enable speed step and i cant figure it out. If anyone hears about anything post a reply to this thread Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-16819 Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcruzlara Posted September 17, 2005 Share Posted September 17, 2005 Hey you guys the most incredible thing happened I installed os x from the dvd and went to the preferences and did the thingy were it slows the cpu down and when i took it out of the ac thing i got like an hour and it eneded up on 76% pretty huh? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-17017 Share on other sites More sharing options...
perium Posted September 17, 2005 Share Posted September 17, 2005 I went into the bios and disabled speed step, the proc is at 800mhz. My battery life didnt change at all. Im assuming since i dont have intel graphics that is why im having crappy battery. I have the ati x300 which isnt supported. I just bought an ibook so i wont have to deal with all these problems. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-17058 Share on other sites More sharing options...
kateikyoushi Posted September 23, 2005 Share Posted September 23, 2005 I do not think it has anything to do with the speedstep. I have an X505 which has no fan and can feel the heat of the machine if it is at full speed but it barely becomes warm so the cpu is running at 600 I assume. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/2396-crappy-battery-life-on-laptops/#findComment-18428 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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