The Ohanaware Weblog
Get more battery life from your MacBook
Today’s weblog post is a couple of tips I’ve collected that might help you get a bit more battery life outa your MacBook or MacBook Pro. I tested these tips while I was writing this article and my time remaining went from 3:16 mins right up to 5:54 mins! It’s still a bit of a far cry from the 7-8 hour indication I used to get, but I’m hoping with a bit more exercise I might see that figure again.
Get Physical
- Un-plug everything you don’t need at that moment, not using that USB hub, unplug it!
- Remove any ExpressCards, or PCMCIA cards that you don’t need. I have a media card reader that fits into the ExpressCard slot, even when there is no media card in there, it consumes juice from my batery.
- Turn down the brightness on the display, this one’s an oldie, but it still helps.
- Use the built-in keyboard and mouse, so many people (myself included) love using a full size keyboard and nice comfy mouse when at their desk. However not using either of them, (yeah the trackpad is slower than a mouse) can give you precious time back
Software
- Open “System Preferences”, and go to “Energy Saver”. Set your graphics card to “Better Battery Life”, set computer sleep: to about 3 mins, with display sleep half of that. Check “Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible”, “Slightly dim the display when using this power source” and “Automatically reduce brightness before display goes to sleep”.
- Next make a trip to “Sharing” (while still in System Preferences) and make sure that everything is unchecked.
- If you’re not using a wireless network at this moment, switch off Airport.
- If you’re not using bluetooth, switch it off.
- Quit any application that you absolutely do not need right at this moment. I don’t care what it is, unless you need right now. Quit it, it’s draining your juice!
- In Apple Mail, or which ever e-mail client you use, set the Check for new messages to a much longer time span. Every time mail checks for mail, it accesses the hard drive… Juice draining!
- In Safari, uncheck “Enable plug-ins”. This will kill flash, (thankfully) saving you plenty of juice if you’re browsing online. Flash, might be pretty and allow for some neat tricks, but it’s a hog and can waste valuable battery life. Turning it off gave me nearly another hour on time remaining. Disabling Javascript can help when visiting sites that use Javascript for some animation, but it doesn’t have such an impact as disabling flash.
- In the Finder, select “View Options” from the “File” menu, and then uncheck “Calculate all sizes”, “Show icon preview” & “Show item info”. I know it makes things look boring, but it means that the Finder doesn’t have to do so much and can save you some time.
- Use “Activity Monitor” to find little processes that siting there sucking up some CPU and quit them. Don’t leave “Activity Monitor” running as it too can consume your precious battery life.
- Disable any system monitoring applications or utilities, these may be pretty and can help track down battery vampires. But left on, they in turn will drain you!
What else can I do
- Ensure your system is always up-to date, running software update and making sure you’re using the latest version of the OS can help.
- Update to Snow Leopard, this should increase battery life as the OS has been re-factored so it uses less space and give you better performance.
- Check your memory, if it’s all used up and you must have these apps open. Invest in some memory so that the computer won’t have to swap so much.
- Check your battery, in the “System Profiler”, under “Power” you can see information about your battery, including the condition. If the condition is anything other than Normal, it’s time to be replaced.
- Sponsored Tip: an external battery for macbook. HyperMac External MacBook Pro Battery & Car Charger
Got any tips I missed, then please let us know by using the comments box below.
Tags: Battery, Battery Life, MacBook, MacBook Pro