Power management on Macbook I am using Parallels for Mac with great success. There is only one very annoying thing which is power management or the complete lack of it. My battery lasts for 4 to 5 hours depending on the usage, but if I run a XP virtual machine, the battery never lasts for more than half of that, even if the vm window is minimized. The vm seems to keep the cpu busy all the time. Power management functions in the vm are not available. I am using 1922 at the moment, but I had same results with older versions. Any ideas? - Herzliche Grüße aus westfälisch Sibirien.
You are correct. Power management does not apply to the guest. If you pause the VM, power consumption is reduced. Minimizing the window does not have any effect on what the VM is doing. In fact, you can set the VM to doing a long task, minimize it, work in OSX, and come back to the VM when it's done.
This is a major problem for those of us who travel. I am currently working on a presentation that has to be done on powerpoint/windows because the translator from powerpoint/mac always messes up the visuals. But running Parallels, I've got about one hour of battery life on my MBP when on the airplane. Of course, I have two batteries, but this is ridiculous. For me, it renders the Parallels solution unusable, at least when I travel.
Several possibilities come to mind, since I get more than that. First, have you turned off anything you aren't using such as bluetooth and airport? Have you calibrated your battery? (Calibration works for only one battery since (IFAIK) the calibration is stored in the machine, not the battery (dumb)). You may have more life in the battery than you think. The default sleep mode for the MBP is dynamic sleep with hibernate backup. When you close the cover, the front light comes on steady for 30 seconds or so, then starts "breathing". This indicates the hibernate file has been written. If this is the case with yours, you can work until the machine goes to sleep on its own when the battery is low, wait for the "breathing" and change the battery. When you power on, your machine will wake up rather than reboot. FastMac sells MBP batteries for $99 ($30 less than Apple) rated at 62 wh vs Apple 60 wh. Get a few of them and you can run for a long time.
