General Question

simone54's avatar

What are some ways to save the battery on a MacBook?

Asked by simone54 (7413 points ) November 26th, 2009

I’m going on long plane ride. I wanna use my MacBook as much as I can. How can I conserve the battery life? I wonder if things like turning the brightness down even affect anything.

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13 Answers

eponymoushipster's avatar

turn off bluetooth and wifi. dim the screen to about 25%. close any unnecessary applications.

also, apple has a magsafe power cord that plugs into the armrest on airplanes.

turn off itunes if youre not listening to music, and dont try to listen to or burn CDs either.

jdogg's avatar

Turn wifi off, if u have multiple OS’s (like leopard or windows) use the native leopard, and turn the brightness

markyy's avatar

Turning off radio (bluetooth and wifi), dimming the screen and switching to headphones saves about 25% on my Dell Vostro.

nimarka1's avatar

Make sure your battery settings are set to Better battery life, instead of having it custom, or on better performance.

jrpowell's avatar

Turn the brightness down as low as you can handle. The screen is the biggest battery killer.

Anything that moves is #2. Minimize hard drive and optical drive use. Watching a DVD will kill your battery really fast since it needs to constantly spin the optical drive.

I would suggest opening up all the applications you will need while plugged in. Starting up apps hits the hard drive. iTunes also uses up a lot of battery since it makes the hard drive spin for each song.

Close the lid before you go through security. They will probably make you confirm that it is a working computer. You don’t want to waste battery proving that your computer is not a bomb. Just close the lid again. Every restart sucks up a lot of power.

And turn off WiFi and Bluetooth.

markyy's avatar

@johnpowell So you should copy all your files to a USB stick or flash memory card (beforehand of course)?

eponymoushipster's avatar

@johnpowell you’ve actually had them make you show that it’s a real computer? i’ve never had that happen. weird.

jrpowell's avatar

@markyy :: That isn’t a bad idea. It will use less power. I would also turn on “porn” mode in your browser if you are using one. Writing to the cache makes the drive spin up. If it doesn’t cache it the hard drive doesn’t need to store it.

@eponymoushipster :: Yeah. I have had them make me prove that it was a computer that functioned.

markyy's avatar

@johnpowell Haha err, of course I don’t use porn mode.. hehe.. he.. he ..e, why? Is there porn on the internet? ~

eponymoushipster's avatar

@johnpowell weird. never had it happen.

Fred931's avatar

Doing all this can increase my approx. MacBook Pro’s battery life (From a random amount of battery remaining, according to approx. remaining time by MacBook top bar) from about an hour to almost two hours!

Fred931's avatar

Also, If you’re trying to save how long the li-ion battery will last in terms of longer time, i.e. months and years, then remember to unplug the MacBook whenever it is charged enough to get you where you’re going. Keeping it plugged in when fully charged will decrease battery life greatly.

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