Help! Battery life woes :(

M

maztec

Member
System: MacBook Pro SantaRosa 15"
Software: OSX, Parallels running Windows Vista Ultimate on BootCamp drive

Issue: Battery life without Parallels running: 4 hours (approx), casual use.
Battery life with Parallels running Vista: 2 hours (approx), casual use (heck, Windows can be idling)

Now, if I put on VMWare Fusion and run Vista.. battery life: 3 hours 35 minutes.

This appears to be a result of Parallel's CPU usage.

Idling Processor %ages:
OSX, no Virtual Machine running: 0-5%
Parallels running Vista: 50-80%
VMWare: 3-8%

If I disable USB in Parallels it drops to 15-30%.
If I turn off sound & USB it drops to 10% ...

Either way, still hire than VMWare & OSX with USB and Sound enabled..

So, I poured through absolutely everything in Windows, killed all of the processes, killed all of the services, loaded up a third party process checker app.. The only thing that stops it is if I disable Vista from testing for new hardware on boot.. Once that is disabled, the system stops using so much processor time. This appears to be a driver issue caused by what hardware Parallels is presenting .. not with what my system is?

If nayone has any tips, that would be great.. Disabling USB & Sound really is not viable. I use OneNote (main reason for getting Parallels), which records audio - via a USB mic.. and do not always have a socket available.. Not to mention, I like keeping my temp below 70C!

Thank you for the help.
 
I use my MacBook Pro to study for an upcoming test, and the material is only available as a Windows application... While I'm out studying, my computer gets better battery life when I disable Bluetooth, turn off AirPort, and quit any unnecessary programs. Also, make sure your keyboard isn't illuminated. I accidentally turned mine on for about TWO minutes and my battery lost about an hour!
 
Forgot to mention - if you haven't used Apple's Activity Monitor (in Utilities), check it out. You can see everything currently running on your Mac, and quit anything you don't need open.
 
Parallels: % CPU: 54.
Firefox: 1.5
Activity Monitor: 1.1
Dock: 0.2

Everything else 0.


My LED screen is typically minimized in brightness. I have the keyboard LED turned off.

I think it's Parallels & there's nothing in Vista reporting as running... over the absolute minimum at idle.. Yet Parallels is running at 48%-64% always..

Thank you though :)
 
I'm running WinXP. I use Control Panel and select the Power Management options.

There I set for Laptop and APM on. That substantially reduces power consumption while running WinXP.

Phil
 
Vista doesn't recognize the system as a laptop when running Parallels (and subsequently doesn't create a new hardware profile) because Parallels is not forwarding the battery information.

On the other hand, I do have it manually set to minimize power usage. However, Vista's task manager and a third party task manager are both saying Vista's actual usage is 1-3%.

However, Parallels is clocking things up to 50% processor usage. Something is wrong and it doesn't appear to be how Vista is running.
 
I've not tried Vista, on a PC or under Parallels -- and I don't plan to at this point since I have WinXP on this MacBook and three PCs and it does all I need. Likely I'd have to upgrade each of those PCs to provide the capability to operate Vista well.

It's particularly annoying that only the two highest end Vista versions are licensed for use in a VM as needed for Parallels.

Phil
 
w70x, Thank you for the lecture on why not to use Vista. I found it extremely helpful and suspect I will be able to utilize it to convince my University to let me use XP for test taking instead, despite them having lockedo ut the test taking software for Vista use only on all first year grad students.

In the mean time, if convincing them fails to result, further patches from Parallels to cure this problem would be appreciated.. as it seems to be related to parallels, not my hardware or my configuration.

As I said, I would use VMWare instead but it is not feasible. If, for no other reason, than the test taking software detects it having been installed and it takes forever to uninstall every aspect of it when rebooting.
 
teg203 said:
I use my MacBook Pro to study for an upcoming test, and the material is only available as a Windows application... While I'm out studying, my computer gets better batterie HP 3105m life when I disable Bluetooth, turn off AirPort, and quit any unnecessary programs. Also, make sure your keyboard isn't illuminated. I accidentally turned mine on for about TWO minutes and my battery lost about an hour!
Click to expand...


Wow,I've the same experience with you...
 
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