SweetMacTips

Power power everywhere, and not a bit to drink

So just how the heck do you get the most out of your Mac’s battery life? I’ve written before about keeping your battery healthy, now let’s find out how to actually get the most battery while you’re using your Mac.

There are some real power drainers in a portable computer. First, anything with a moving part. That goes for things like your hard drive and your optical drive. If you can get away with it, don’t use them while you’re on battery power.

Don’t use my hard drive while on battery power? How the heck do I do that?! One way is to make sure you have the appropriate settings. Go into your System Preferences and then into Energy Saver.

See the checkbox there for Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible? Make sure that’s ticked. What this will do is spin down the hard disk when it’s not needed, saving you precious juice.

If all you’re doing is surfing the web or working on a paper, you may notice that your computer doesn’t use its hard drive very often while doing these things. This is a great way to save battery.

If battery life is the ultimate thing, you may want to consider a MacBook Air which has what’s called an SSD or “Solid State Disk.” Think of a USB thumb drive but bigger capacity and as your hard disk. There are no moving parts so it saves quite a bit in battery life. They’re a bit pricy now when compared to regular hard drives, but it’s something to consider.

Where else can you save on energy? Wireless. Both Bluetooth and Airport will suck down that battery like it’s their jobs. If you’re in a place with no WiFi, turn off Airport. You’ll notice a dramatic change in your battery life. Bluetooth is really only needed if you’re using wireless peripherals like keyboards and mice or syncing the data on your cell phone. If you’re not doing that, shut off Bluetooth too.

We’re not done yet! Another big power draw is your display. That backlight can suck down quite a bit of power. Even newer Macs that use LEDs to light the display while consuming considerably less energy than prior Mac portables still use a lot of energy. Use the brightness keys to turn down the display brightness. If you notice your Mac adjusting it automatically and you don’t want it to, go into System Preferences, then Displays. You should see a checkbox for automatically adjusting the display brightness. Turn it off. Halving your display’s brightness can make a huge difference in battery run time. If you’re in a dark room, you can probably deal with it being a tick or two from the very bottom where the backlight is off all-together.

One last thing to consider (but you may not be able to do much about) is heat. If your Mac heats up (either because it’s working hard or you’ve got it sitting on a pillow) it’s going to want to use the fan. What’s the fan? A moving part. Thus more energy sapped out of your battery.

Hopefully these tips will let you get more run time out of your battery.