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:
- Follow the previous hints (1, 2, 3) as already recommened (drain your battery fully then recharge, turn off airport etc).
- 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).
- Before you unplug your laptop to take on the road, turn the screen brightness all the way down to the last visible level.
- Close the lid and let your laptop go to sleep. (or do it from the Apple menu). Unplug your laptop.
- When you wake your laptop, do not turn up the screen brightness yet. Wait until the battery icon stops "(Calculating...)"
- Wait a few more seconds to let the reported time stabilize.
- 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