[minisst]

From a full charge how long can your Mini 9 sleep? Have you tried it? Actually, how OSX does with this feature is one of the many great things with OSX. You can just leave your 9 on like a cell phone, charge it when you need to, ready to go when you need it.

With all this talk about sleep, I've been keeping an eye on my Mini. You know, I wonder if the 9 isn't more efficient under 10.5.8. "Underwhelmed" this should make you very happy. See, there may be a big plus here. I have been checking over the past 24, and you know, it seems like the charge is dropping slower than when I was on 10.5.7. It only dropped from 100 to 70% in twenty hours of hibernation. At that rate, it would take over 60 hours to lose a complete charge.

Matter of fact, I stuck it in it's neoprene rubber foam sleeve, zipped up all day while at work. It didn't even get warm. From time to time I would check on the little dude to see if he was alive still. Yep, he was happy.

Maybe someone can check me on this, like someone we know with 4 Mini 9's. If you are going to check on a 10.5.8 Mini, sleep key before you close the lid, or the little guy might be faking sleep.

[underwhelmed]

Hey, I just downloaded and installed the new Safari, and my issues seem resolved. I just finished watching a 30 minute show on Hulu, and aside from the normal buffering issues with Hulu, it worked great, and no lock-ups so far.

I will happily stick with 10.5.8, as long as the new Safari doesn't start acting up on me. So far so good.

[cubedweller]

My mini will stay asleep for a few days without charge, at least. Although I have not tested this, exactly, (mainly because I use it daily and cannot live without it now) I haven't turned the mini off in a few months. It generally sleeps all night (not plugged in) and it has enough charge in the morning to take it with me all day with moderate use. Without watching a movie or streaming flash videos, I can use the mini9 for a few days without having to charge it.

[kilikili]

I'd let my mini sleep awhile but I can't keep my grubby hands off of it.

[irha]

I have 10.5.7 and I remember it lasted about 3 days in sleep before I started seeing the red light, though I can't accurately tell if it was 3 full days or less or more. My general impression is that full size laptops (though my experience is only with XP) do much better with battery consumption... or may be it is false impression in case the battery usage during the sleep is not much different than full size laptops (because %ge wise mini9 would then use more charge than full size laptops).

[reflex]

Originally Posted by irha

My general impression is that full size laptops (though my experience is only with XP) do much better with battery consumption... or may be it is false impression in case the battery usage during the sleep is not much different than full size laptops (because %ge wise mini9 would then use more charge than full size laptops).

I have the same impression. I think it's because when suspended, the power savings of the Atom CPU, small screen, SSD, etc. no longer help, since they're turned off. You're left powering a normal laptop RAM module on a small battery.

Also, the OS won't matter at all. Power consumption when suspended is 100% hardware dependent.

[irha]

I consciously measured the battery consumption over yesterday night while suspended. It consumed about 13% over a period of 11hr 30min. That is about 1.1% drop in charge per hr., so with a full charge, it should last about 3.5 days.

I remember seeing a warning when the level dropped to 5% as I was using it, but I haven't noticed any setting on what it should do when the level is so critically low (like how windows allows you to configure what to do at different levels). I hope osx will shutdown the pc instead of draining batteries to unsafely low voltage. Anyone has insight into this? Does the bios probably protect against unsafe battery voltage?

[JustAMacUser]

Generally lithium ion batteries have built-in circuitry that prevents deep discharge. It also regulates the charging so that it charges slower when it's closer to 100%.

And while I have not independently confirmed it, I have read that li-ion batteries in devices shut down long before they are near the 0% mark. In other words, 5% reported by the OS is 5% of the allowed power. The battery itself could be at 40% but because deep discharges are bad, it won't allow itself to get that low.

[mrboult]

Originally Posted by irha

I hope osx will shutdown the pc instead of draining batteries to unsafely low voltage. Anyone has insight into this? Does the bios probably protect against unsafe battery voltage?

From my experience using real macs the OS is very reliable at powering down and auto saving.

[safemode]

Originally Posted by JustAMacUser

Generally lithium ion batteries have built-in circuitry that prevents deep discharge. It also regulates the charging so that it charges slower when it's closer to 100%.

And while I have not independently confirmed it, I have read that li-ion batteries in devices shut down long before they are near the 0% mark. In other words, 5% reported by the OS is 5% of the allowed power. The battery itself could be at 40% but because deep discharges are bad, it won't allow itself to get that low.

You are correct. If the Li-ion batteries did not have this circuitry (and it's part of the reason why they are so expensive) then the polarity would reverse on them and they would be permanently damaged. So 0% in the OS, is 0% of the safe discharge level.

Also, This topic is in the wrong forum. Talking about how reliable waking from sleep is in mac-osx makes sense, but talking about how long you can sit in sleep is not os x dependent at all.

And if you want to compare sleep time between your netbook and your laptop, you have to estimate the time your netbook would stay in sleep based on a sample then do the same for your laptop, then take your netbook's battery power rating and divide it by your laptop's battery power rating and multiple that with the time the laptop was estimated to sit sleeping.

This will give you how long the laptop will take to eat the power rating of the netbook's battery and let you see if your netbook is consuming the same power faster or slower than the laptop is.

If 1.1% per hour is accurate, then the mini 9 far exceeds the efficiency of sleep power usage compared to other dell full size laptops. This is most likely due to the components supporting low power usage than anything else. Most laptops top out over 1watt (usually 2) during sleep. 1.1% is .32 watts.