PowerBook battery question
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OP
Joined: Aug 2009
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Sorry to join in late. I usually - for reasons I can't recall at this moment in time - run my powerbook off the battery until it reaches about 50% and then run off mains until 100% , then off battery until 50% again and so on and calibrate every month or so if I can remember. However, a couple of nights ago, just after the battery had reached 100%, I turned off at mains and shut the lid. I usually shut down the laptop every evening after use, but on this occasion I proceeded to forget to do so, which, effectively means that the laptop has been asleep for about 48 hours. When I opened the lid tonight I noticed that the battery power had reduced to 53% Surely, this seems somewhat excessive to drop 47% whilst asleep for 2 days? Something else I've just remembered is that I have noticed that when the battery is re-charging, it does so much more quickly whilst I am still using the laptop than if the lid was down/asleep. Any comments or whatever? Regards. Mike Edited by MikeS (09/26/10 02:47 PM CST)Edited by moderator: detached from Should leave cord in laptop?
Last edited by dianne; 09/27/10 10:48 PM. Reason: changed Subject line.
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Re: PowerBook battery question
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Joined: Dec 2009
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Interesting, I was at internet cafe. I did not want to leave the laptop alone unattended. I closed the lid, walked to the bathroom. but after I opened the lid, everything was black.
Had to boot up.
and this laptop often cannot find the system for some reason, so had to do whole boot up with option key.
New rule: keep that lid open!
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Re: PowerBook battery question
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OP
Joined: Aug 2009
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And I thought my laptop/battery behaviour was cause for confusion! Regards. Mike
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Re: PowerBook battery question
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Moderator
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Moderator
Joined: Aug 2009
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Hi, Mike Let us know what is reported when you go to System Profiler > Hardware > Power > Health Information:
Back up everything you can't afford to lose: documents, mail, movies, music, photos, and other data and settings.
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Re: PowerBook battery question
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Joined: Sep 2009
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Here's my new 2010 MBP, for comparison: system_profiler SPPowerDataType |grep -A2 Health
Health Information:
Cycle count: 16
Condition: Normal
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Re: PowerBook battery question
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Joined: Aug 2009
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Sometimes laptops have issues with sleep and wake. It's often an OS issue. I have a rule of thumb I try to follow with my mbp, my primary computer.
When I get ready to go, I unplug all cables, THEN close the lid. The sleep light comes on at 50% and stays solid. After about 20 sec, (varies on amount of ram installed and open apps) the light starts pulsing.
I do NOT put it in the bag until it pulses. If it fails to pulse, most of the time when I reopen it, it's still very much awake. Sometimes closing the lid the second time works. Sometimes not. If it DOESN'T work, it's NOT going to sleep, and I shut it down instead. (and then, sometimes it fails to shut down properly)
If I don't follow this rule, on the rare times it fails to sleep, it'll continue to run in my bag, sometimes for an hour or more, quickly exhausting its battery and overheating due to being closed in the bag. When i get where I'm going, the mbp is OFF, HOT, and the battery is TOTALLY DEAD. (and will be FSCK'ing for a slow startup when I turn it back on) Thankfully I carry a spare battery, but still, something I try to avoid.
Never trust your computer to finish preparing for sleep. Always wait for it and verify it's asleep before leaving it.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department
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Re: PowerBook battery question
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OP
Joined: Aug 2009
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Why thank you for your concern. As for the health of the battery, its pulse seems fine when asleep. However, probably due to the fact that I'm running OSX 10.4.11, I can find no "Health Information" regarding "Condition". "Cycle Count" is 180, in fact, here are all the details :- Battery Information: Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3357 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 2930 Amperage (mA): -1071 Voltage (mV): 16168 Cycle Count: 180 I hope this means more to someone else than it does to myself, although in my own "defence" I do understand the significance of "Cycle Count". I would point out that this battery is only about nine months old and was a replacement for one that only "lasted" less than twelve months. Although I don't consider £80 (about $130) to be cheap, perhaps, with hindsight, a more expensive "Apple" replacement may have been a better course of action. Thanks again. Regards. Mike
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Re: PowerBook battery question
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Joined: Aug 2009
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Battery Information:
Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3357 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 2930 Amperage (mA): -1071 Voltage (mV): 16168 Cycle Count: 180 The FCC of 3357 is still doing pretty good. Known best limit would depend on your model but I'd say anything over 2700 or so is going to have fair runtime. (mine's fairly new, over 5000) -1071 means you're discharging (running on battery) 180 cycle count is a bit over 1/2 toward getting a new battery. The rest of the information isn't very useful to you concerning battery health. I'm going to make two more posts, containing a checking program I wrote and a summary program I wrote also. Leave me alone those of you that know bash, it's been awhile since I wrote it and I'm too lazy to clean it up since it works Run the first one and follow the directions. when your computer force sleeps (or shuts off), plug it back in and wake it up/start it up and run the second one to get a nice graph showing the discharge curve which we can look at to see if there's a problem.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department
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battmonitor
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Joined: Aug 2009
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#!/bin/bash
cd "${0%/*}"
# poll battery every x seconds
resolution=5
clear
echo
read -p "Be sure screen and computer sleep are disabled, press RETURN: " x
clear
echo
echo "Recommended steps for use:"
echo "1) disable energysaver settings that will put the computer to sleep"
echo "2) wait for the battery to become fully charged, or as far as it will go"
echo "3) start battmonitor"
echo "4) immediately unplug ac power"
echo "5) allow the computer to deplete the battery and go to forced sleep"
echo "6) plug the computer back into ac power and immediately wake it up"
echo "7) allow the computer to fully charge the battery"
echo "8) ctrl-c to stop battmonitor, and run battsummary to view resuls"
echo
echo
if [ -f battcheck.txt ] ; then
echo "battcheck.txt file already exists."
echo
echo "If the computer shut down instead of sleep, you can resume"
echo "the recording now to analyze the charge process as well."
echo "This is best done immediately after ac power was restored."
echo
while true ; do
read -p "Resume recording or Create new? (R/C): " rc
rc=$(echo "$rc" | tr a-z A-Z)
if [ "$rc" == "C" ] ; then
rm battcheck.txt
echo
echo "(old recording file has been cleared)"
break
elif [ "$rc" == "R" ] ; then
echo
echo "(resuming recording)"
break
fi
done
fi
echo
echo
echo "monitoring battery... use battsummary to view results later."
echo
while true ; do
x=$(system_profiler SPPowerDataType | grep -i remaining)
y=$(date)
echo "$y $x"
echo "$y $x" >> battcheck.txt
sleep $resolution
done
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department
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battsummary
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Joined: Aug 2009
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#!/bin/bash
# only thing left to do is trim off "fully charged" dups at the end of the input file
clear
cd "${0%/*}"
file3="battcheck.txt"
file1="battcheck0.txt"
file2="battcheck2.txt"
if ! [ -f "$file3" ] ; then
echo "Cannot find \"$file3\" in this folder, did you run the battmonitor?"
exit
fi
newfile="battsummary $(date "+%Y-%m-%d %H.%M").txt"
if [ -f "$newfile" ] ; then
rm "$newfile"
fi
touch "$newfile"
echo
echo "Will create \"$newfile\""
echo
# trim off any duplicats at the end
x=$(tail -n 1 "$file3")
x=$(echo "$x" | cut -c $((${#x}-6))-99)
head -n $(($(cat "$file3" | wc -l)-$(cat "$file3" | grep "$x" | wc -l)+1)) "$file3" > "$file1"
r=$(($(cat "$file3" | wc -l)-$(cat "$file1" | wc -l)))
if [ $r -gt 10 ] ; then
echo "(trimmed $r duplicate samples from end of $file3)"
echo
fi
tot=$(($(cat "$file1" | wc -l)))
echo "Read $tot lines from \"$file1\""
echo
echo
echo
if [ -f "$file2" ] ; then
rm "$file2"
fi
# read in source file, with lines like:
# Mon Aug 25 18:17:19 CDT 2008 Charge remaining (mAh): 6036
# and make another file with lines like:
# 1219706233 6036
# where first field is epoch seconds, and second field is mAh
# also, track min and max values of mAh
echo -n " converting $file1 to raw data..."
n=0
lowcharge=9999
highcharge=0
while read x ; do
file1epoch=$(date -j -f "%a %b %d %T %Z %Y" "$(echo "$x" | cut -c 1-28)" "+%s")
file1mah=$(echo "$x" | cut -c $((${#x}-6))-999 | cut -d ' ' -f 2)
echo ${file1epoch}$'\t'${file1mah} >> "$file2"
n=$((n+1))
echo -n $'\r'$((n*100/tot))" "
if [ $lowcharge -gt $file1mah ] ; then
lowcharge=$file1mah
elif [ $highcharge -lt $file1mah ] ; then
highcharge=$file1mah
fi
done < "$file1"
echo "done"
echo
rm "$file1"
echo "mAh ranges from $lowcharge to $highcharge over $((highcharge-lowcharge))"
echo "mAh ranges from $lowcharge to $highcharge over $((highcharge-lowcharge))" >> "$newfile"
# 101 characters
bar="*****************************************************************************************************"
starttime=$(head -n 1 "$file2" | cut -f 1)
finishtime=$(tail -n 1 "$file2" | cut -f 1)
deltatime=$((finishtime-starttime))
echo "Time ranges from $(date -j -f "%s" "$starttime") to $(date -j -f "%s" "$finishtime") over $(date -j -f "%s" "$(($deltatime+21600))" "+%H:%M:%S")"
echo "Time ranges from $(date -j -f "%s" "$starttime") to $(date -j -f "%s" "$finishtime") over $(date -j -f "%s" "$(($deltatime+21600))" "+%H:%M:%S")" >> "$newfile"
echo "(in epoch seconds, $starttime to $finishtime over $deltatime)"
echo "(in epoch seconds, $starttime to $finishtime over $deltatime)" >> "$newfile"
echo
echo >> "$newfile"
deltacharge=$((highcharge-lowcharge))
pct=0
sampletime=0
gap=0
sampleinc=$(($deltatime/100))
while [ $pct -le 100 ] ; do
finddtime=$(($deltatime*$pct/100))
findtime=$(($starttime+$finddtime))
while [ $sampletime -lt $findtime ] ; do
read sample
sampletime=$(echo "$sample"| cut -f 1)
done
samplecharge=$(echo "$sample"| cut -f 2)
pctcharge=$(($samplecharge*100/$highcharge+1))
sampledtime=$(($sampletime-$starttime))
barcharge=$(echo "$bar" | cut -c 1-${pctcharge})
reltimeh=$(date -j -f "%s" "$(($sampledtime+21600))" "+%H:%M:%S")
sampletimeh=$(date -j -f "%s" "$(($sampletime))" "+%H:%M:%S")
if [ $(($sampletime-$findtime)) -gt $sampleinc ] ; then
gap=$((gap+1))
if [ $lastok ] ; then
echo "--:-:-- / --:-:-- --- (no readings)"
echo "--:-:-- / --:-:-- --- (no readings)" >> "$newfile"
lastok=
fi
else
echo "$sampletimeh / $reltimeh $checkcharge $pctcharge $barcharge"
echo "$sampletimeh / $reltimeh $checkcharge $pctcharge $barcharge" >> "$newfile"
lastok=1
fi
pct=$((pct+1))
done < "$file2"
norm=100
amp=$((100*norm/(100-gap)))
#echo "gap=$gap, amp=$amp"
if [ $amp -gt 120 ] ; then
echo
echo >> "$newfile"
echo "Normalizing to $norm readings..."
echo "Normalizing to $norm readings..." >> "$newfile"
echo
echo >> "$newfile"
pct2=0
sampletime=0
sampleinc=$(($deltatime/100))
while [ $pct2 -le $amp ] ; do
pct=$((pct2*100/amp))
finddtime=$(($deltatime*pct2/amp))
findtime=$(($starttime+$finddtime))
while [ $sampletime -lt $findtime ] ; do
read sample
sampletime=$(echo "$sample"| cut -f 1)
done
samplecharge=$(echo "$sample"| cut -f 2)
pctcharge=$(($samplecharge*100/$highcharge+1))
sampledtime=$(($sampletime-$starttime))
barcharge=$(echo "$bar" | cut -c 1-${pctcharge})
reltimeh=$(date -j -f "%s" "$(($sampledtime+21600))" "+%H:%M:%S")
sampletimeh=$(date -j -f "%s" "$(($sampletime))" "+%H:%M:%S")
if [ $(($sampletime-$findtime)) -gt $sampleinc ] ; then
if [ $lastok ] ; then
echo "--:-:-- / --:-:-- --- (no readings)"
echo "--:-:-- / --:-:-- --- (no readings)" >> "$newfile"
lastok=
fi
else
echo "$sampletimeh / $reltimeh $checkcharge $pctcharge $barcharge"
echo "$sampletimeh / $reltimeh $checkcharge $pctcharge $barcharge" >> "$newfile"
lastok=1
fi
pct2=$((pct2+1))
done < "$file2"
fi
echo
echo "Output saved to \"$newfile\""
echo
rm "$file2"
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department
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Re: PowerBook battery question
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OP
Joined: Aug 2009
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Thanks for your reply - I'm more reassured already. I will check out the other two posts when I feel more adventurous. Thanks again. Regards. Mike
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