Report proper battery life estimates on laptops

Apr 02, '03 09:35:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Many iBook and PowerBook owners have been complaining that the battery meter is under-reporting the battery life. Here is how you can force the OS to recalculate the battery life for the better:

  1. Follow the previous hints (1, 2, 3) as already recommened (drain your battery fully then recharge, turn off airport etc).
  2. Leave your laptop plugged in for a while, even after 100% charge (don't know if this step is necessary, but thats what I did).
  3. Before you unplug your laptop to take on the road, turn the screen brightness all the way down to the last visible level.
  4. Close the lid and let your laptop go to sleep. (or do it from the Apple menu). Unplug your laptop.
  5. When you wake your laptop, do not turn up the screen brightness yet. Wait until the battery icon stops "(Calculating...)"
  6. Wait a few more seconds to let the reported time stabilize.
  7. Turn up the screen brightness to a comfortable level and work.
On my iBook 700, the first time-left report says 5:07 when I do this! Then as I turn up my screen brightness all the way I get a stable report of 3:30. This is much better than before.

Basically the idea is to make the battery calculation occur when the laptop is consuming the least amount of power.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030331151650491