A Macbook's battery life; why so long, and would Ubuntu make it shorter?

[TheNessus]

long title, but it asks all I wanted :)

What makes a Macbook's life so long, 8-10 hours, even if it's pretty well loaded and not as lightly built as a Netbook?

Also, considering the supposed-fact that Ubuntu tends to damage batteries or their lifespan, would you install Ubuntu on a Macbook?

[kaldor]

MacBooks don't last 8-10 hours. I get about 3 hours average out of mine without doing anything intensive. The 8-10 hour thing is a "I can make my Mac last long by turning off the backlight and leaving it at the login screen all day" gimmick ;)

Never heard about Ubuntu ruining battery life though. Care to link me? My HP laptop makes me rush for the cord every 30 minutes max.

[warriork26]

There is no such thing as an 8 hour battery life on a macbook. I get 2-3 by using firefox and ichat.

[TheNessus]

MacBooks don't last 8-10 hours. I get about 3 hours average out of mine without doing anything intensive. The 8-10 hour thing is a "I can make my Mac last long by turning off the backlight and leaving it at the login screen all day" gimmick ;)

Never heard about Ubuntu ruining battery life though. Care to link me? My HP laptop makes me rush for the cord every 30 minutes max.

Huh, that is disappointing.

Umm I do not have a link, I have read many such sayings here on the forum though; that it "may" damage the battary or shorten its lifespan and stuff. Nothing conclusive, and I was hoping I could get more info here. My own experience is with my lappy, 6 cell bat used to last 2.5 hours, 3 hours max with backlight off and wireless off, etc. But it rapidly declined over time. Now it says it's "broken" and runs a max of 10 minutes...

[ubunterooster]

Never heard about Ubuntu ruining battery life though
Some support posts claim this, personally, with power options I got much longer life out of my desktop and APC with Ubuntu as opposed to Vista

[TheNessus]

Some support posts claim this, personally, with power options I got much longer life out of my desktop and APC with Ubuntu as opposed to Vista
No doubt a battery will last longer under a lightweight system (any linux basically) than on any windows version. The issue here is not specific OS usage as opposed to another, but on a longrun possible damage to the battery.

Anyway, seeing that the gimmick of a long bat life on a macbook is pretty lame (gimmick here (http://www.apple.com/macbook/features.html)), it pretty much disways me from obtaining one.

[ubunterooster]

Ah,okay. I know that batteries, esp. Li-ions like slow discharge cycles

[KiwiNZ]

I get 6 + hours from my battery and have had as high as 8 on occasions. This is using Snow Leopard.

Before I moved from Leopard to Snow Leopard I tried Ubuntu on the Macbook and noticed a marked drop in battery life. I do not feel Ubuntu's power management plays well with Macbooks.

[finsyourfriend]

The average lifespan of a battery is about two to three years, though battery lifespans vary from user to user. If a battery can't hold a charge, the battery should be replaced.

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

[aysiu]

There is no such thing as an 8 hour battery life on a macbook. Sure there is. My wife has a new Macbook Pro, and she gets easily more than 8 hours out of it. The new ones get great battery life. The old ones don't (I have her old Macbook Pro from 2008, and it gets 1 hour if I'm lucky).

[TheNessus]

The average lifespan of a battery is about two to three years, though battery lifespans vary from user to user. If a battery can't hold a charge, the battery should be replaced.

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html
Yes.

A reason why I am concerned about Ubuntu is, that in my case, it dropped to less than 20% capacity in about 10 months after purchase, and not a lot of battery usage. I don't know if it's Ubuntu's power management specifically or a bad battery (Fujitsu Esprimo Mobile)

[KiwiNZ]

Yes.

A reason why I am concerned about Ubuntu is, that in my case, it dropped to less than 20% capacity in about 10 months after purchase, and not a lot of battery usage. I don't know if it's Ubuntu's power management specifically or a bad battery (Fujitsu Esprimo Mobile)

Do you fully discharge often ? and do you leave it for long periods attached to the mains all of which takes away cycles.

I seldom discharge and only have mine on mains to charge and is still at 96 % after 12 months approx.

[arashiko28]

Huh, that is disappointing.

Umm I do not have a link, I have read many such sayings here on the forum though; that it "may" damage the battary or shorten its lifespan and stuff. Nothing conclusive, and I was hoping I could get more info here. My own experience is with my lappy, 6 cell bat used to last 2.5 hours, 3 hours max with backlight off and wireless off, etc. But it rapidly declined over time. Now it says it's "broken" and runs a max of 10 minutes...

It is a lie, Ubuntu doesn't break your battery.
Bet your battery: a) has over 2 years already; b) Is NiCad and you left it plugged over 15 days in a row; c) If NiCad you never allowed it to fully discharge...

If is a Li-Ion and you treated it as a NiCad, you made it go bad.

My personal experience with 2 different brands of laptop and having used both types of battery, is that as soon as warranty goes off, battery dies (2 years), high and low temperatures such as cold winters and leaving the computer at the car, damages the batt, if NiCad you must never allow it to be plugged 2 weeks in a row or it dies, and must allow it to discharge fully so that cell memory keeps it good.
If Li-Ion never ever do this, but must use the batt at least once a week and don't allow it to run dry.
And last but not least, laptop batteries only support a limited amount of charge-discharge cycles (from 1,000 to 2,500) so after that it's time to get a new one.
_______________

Sorry, saw your post, you said you don't give much use to the battery, therefore, choice a get ruled out, but b takes the fault.

[TheNessus]

Do you fully discharge often ? and do you leave it for long periods attached to the mains all of which takes away cycles.

I seldom discharge and only have mine on mains to charge and is still at 96 % after 12 months approx.
I never take the battery out. Haven't considered that as a factor really...

[TheNessus]

It is a lie, Ubuntu doesn't break your battery.
Bet your battery: a) has over 2 years already; b) Is NiCad and you left it plugged over 15 days in a row; c) If NiCad you never allowed it to fully discharge...

If is a Li-Ion and you treated it as a NiCad, you made it go bad.

My personal experience with 2 different brands of laptop and having used both types of battery, is that as soon as warranty goes off, battery dies (2 years), high and low temperatures such as cold winters and leaving the computer at the car, damages the batt, if NiCad you must never allow it to be plugged 2 weeks in a row or it dies, and must allow it to discharge fully so that cell memory keeps it good.
If Li-Ion never ever do this, but must use the batt at least once a week and don't allow it to run dry.
And last but not least, laptop batteries only support a limited amount of charge-discharge cycles (from 1,000 to 2,500) so after that it's time to get a new one.

It is Lithium-Ion, 10 months old lappy+batt, from the store. I never took it out, and I go to classes with it, plugging it when I can, but I do run on battery at least once a day, never to go below 10%, then its programmed to hibernate. Something here went wrong; and rumours about Ubuntu screwing it up may be worth considering - some kind of wrong power-management, some badly written code, who knows. The drop was more or less instant, once I was running it on battery happily and cheerfully at a high capacity, the next time - a warning sign, "broken" battery no more than 20% capacity, varying 10 to 20 every time.

So basically I would like a computer with good hardware (not a netbook) with a long battery life - and that's a mac (ok, new macbooks, according to evidence here). But I don't like OSX, so hence my ubuntu fears.

:)

[arashiko28]

Well, don't know then, but my laptop has ubuntu since I bought it and had no problems until it turned 18 months old, then battery died in about 6 months, when I changed it, was still at 70% and gives a good hour and a half still...

[3rdalbum]

Ubuntu does not operate the charging mechanism, nor any really low-level battery operations. It can query the battery state and whether or not the power is plugged in, but that is all. There's no way that Ubuntu can damage a battery.

There are known to be faulty batteries out there. Surprisingly, my cheap one from Hong Kong is not one of them :-) Over 12 months old, stays plugged into the power, often shallow-discharged, and its capacity is still 90%.

Some computer manufacturers are issuing recalls on batteries that are known to be explosive. Even if Ubuntu doesn't pop up a notification and alert you of the recall (it's a very cool Gnome feature), you should check your computer manufacturer's website to see if they've recalled your battery. Sometimes, the cause of battery explosions is the same as the cause of low battery life.

Oh, and I can't wait for Apple to issue a recall on their integrated 10-hour batteries. It'll happen. But unfortunately the poor customers will be without the use of their computers for a while.

[NightwishFan]

I think because they are able to spend so much time researching what uses power on their own brand of hardware. I will use my machine (Asus Notebook) as an example. The marketing says 4hrs of battery for Windows 7. It (idle) gets about that much.

Ubuntu 10.04 (compared to previous releases) uses a simple and more foolproof power management package. It is designed to 'just work' without set up. So by default I get around 2-3 hours say 14-16W.

The laptop mode tools package, which is mainly for disk related power saving (I believe) automatically configures my disk (verified via hdparm) for power saving. It has a rating of 1 on battery and 254 (highest i/o, as 255 is no power management) on ac. I get about 3-3 1/2 hours here.

Now enter powertop. I made a thread a bit back about how this increased power savings for me with some simple tweaks. Again, for example, the Audio and USB devices do not auto suspend, something related to sata power management, and disabling my wifi (when im not on it) gave me the results for the screenshot below. Granted that will cut by half on any heavy use but it is a big improvement. (About 7-8W from the 14 above)

For individual machines as long as the hardware is supported you can probably get good power management, just not by default yet, as something working at all is more important than saving a few minutes on battery. We will have to do some research and collect data so that power management tweaks can be added safely the default. I am no expert on this but I do hope to lend a hand if possible.

[KiwiNZ]

All batteries are ending their life the day after they were made .Electrolyte decay and plate decay starts straight away and that affects ALL LI-ion batteries. Internal resistance begins to build and that cannot be reversed and will end the kill it.

Batteries are not that expensive and when replacing it pays to buy genuine replacement not generic and pay special attention to the Manufacture date on the packaging as I said , it starts its death the day after manufacture even it it is not being used.

[NightwishFan]

So do we all. Remember to dispose of batteries properly kiddies.

[Johnsie]

I've had alot of problems with overheating on Laptops with Ubuntu. Use it at your own risk. Netbooks seem to be more capable of dealing with it though.