Apple MacBook 13-inch 1.83GHz

Reviews: Hardware

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Anthony Fiti
Kurtis
N/A
Aug. 1, 2006

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Testing - Battery Life & MagSafe Adapter

Apple's website addresses three specific usage scenarios with respect to battery life. The first and longest lasting battery life scenario is light usage (typing up a Word document for example) without using wireless connectivity (Airport and Bluetooth), which Apple says will last about 6 hours. They also state that light usage with Airport enabled would yield about 3.5 hours, and watching a DVD would mean about 2.5 hours of battery life.

Battery life is a tough thing to test, as there are many variables that will impact battery life, such as LCD brightness, system usage (processor load), wireless connectivity (Airport and Bluetooth), how much the hard drive and DVD drive are utilized, and powering any external peripherals. As more things are going on with your laptop, your battery will of course drain quicker. Until the promised fuel cells of the future show up and give us 8-hour battery life, we'll have to live a somewhat tethered lifestyle.

The first scenario I tested was light usage with all wireless connectivity turned off, in which the battery life was about 4 hours and 45 minutes. I spent this time typing up documents in Word, reading some PDFs that I had stored on the unit previously, and sometimes just letting it sit there for a minute while I collected some notes. The LCD was set at the lowest level I could stand to use it in a moderately lighted environment. So, Apple's claim of 6 hours seems enthusiastic at best.

The next scenario I tested was watching DVD's. Apple's advertised time was fairly close; I managed to squeak out 3 hours and 10 minutes. Again this test was conducted with the wireless turned off, and the LCD brightness set to the lowest I could stand (about 50%). One variant on this setup was to watch movies that were found on the hard drive. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to get 3 hours and 45 minutes when not accessing the DVD drive. CPU utilization while decoding these movies was around 20% and that was after the CPU was clocked down by the power management system to 1.5GHz. Also for this round of testing I had very good control of the light in the environment - I was in an aircraft cabin in a window seat - and had the window closed and no overhead lights on.

I also tested the light use with wireless (802.11G) connectivity. I typed up part of this review, had FireFox and Adium (a multiprotocol IM client) running in the background, the LCD brightness turned up to about 60%, and I would intermittently get up and do stuff (get a drink, walk around a little, etc). The battery life under these not so scientific but very realistic conditions was 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Usage	Claimed	Actual
Light	6:00	~4:45
Moderate	3:30	~3:10-3:45
Heavy	2:30	~2:45

The MagSafe power plug is an attempt to make your AC adapter last longer and keep the adapter and the laptop out of the repair shop. It works by using magnets to keep the AC adapter cord attached to your laptop while charging and powering the laptop. On top of the connector is a bi-color LED, orange to indicate that the laptop is charging and green to indicate the charging is complete. Of course, the LED is off when it is not connected to the MacBook.

I have noticed that depending on which direction the tension on the power cord is with respect to the laptop affects the amount of force needed to break the connection. If the connector is pulled down, the connection is broken quite easily, however if the force is parallel to the plug (that is, the force is in the same plane as the laptop) the amount of force needed increases dramatically. Though in either case the static friction of the pads on the bottom of the laptop and the surface of the table it's on will keep it from going anywhere.

However not everything was peachy-keen when it comes to the MagSafe adapter, and as other reports around the web can attest to, the connection from the wire into the MagSafe adapter isn't the most reliable in the world. Apparently, someone's MagSafe adapter melted! Although some people have said that some of the original pictures were removed which "clearly show that the owner's cat had urinated on the connector."

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Page 11 of 14

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Ordering the MacBook
Page 3: First Looks
Page 4: Taking a Closer Look
Page 5: Setup & Packaged Software
Page 6: Testing - Hardware
Page 7: Testing - Software
Page 8: Testing - Interfacing with and Running Windows
Page 9: Testing - Temperature
Page 10: Testing - Performance
Page 11: Testing - Battery Life & MagSafe Adapter
Page 12: Tech Support Experience #1
Page 13: Tech Support Experience #2
Page 14: Conclusion

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