[This post was written as a comment on AMD's blog about battery life stats.]
Okay here's a great example of the "battery life" issue.
I have a 2006 Prius. And the fuel indicator has an 8 bar indicator for gas level. And I also reset my trip meter after I fill up. And here's where I think Toyota has missed the mark. I can go upwards of 120 miles and the gas meter still shows FULL, all 8 bars are still lit.
Now I know the Prius gets good mileage, but that's a little to Jetsons. The car actually gets around 340-370 to a ten gallon tank. I average 38 mpg combined, even when I'm driving pretty aggressively. So, at the top of the gauge the measure is useless. But as the car moves closer to that magic 340-350 range the lights practically go out at in pairs. And if you see that last LED marker flash and the "add fuel" message on the dash, DO NOT PASS ANOTHER STATION. Get gas immediately.
So the fuel gauge is useless in the Prius. I know I get near 350 miles per tank with a gallon or so to spare. And the only indicator that causes me to take action is the flashing light, and if I've let the fuel get THAT LOW then it is an idiot light.
My laptop battery has similar issues.
When unplugged my MBP does it's best to calculate time remaining to standby. And the accuracy of the minutes to black is less important than the final "please plug in your laptop to avoid standby" message. Or the equivalent of the flashing "add fuel" message.
So in the real world my MPB with a 2.4 Intel Core Duo 2 gets approximately 3 – 3.5 hours on a full, overnight, charge. But the real measure, the real indicator I look for is that final "add fuel" warning.
Now, I am waiting with anticipation for my new 17" MBP with Apple's enhanced Li battery. Advertised and marketed at 8 hours battery life, I am not so concerned or worried about "exactly" how long the battery will last, but more about how much warning I will have between when the battery says, "add fuel" and when the machine powers down in the middle of my Spore victory dance.
In terms of reporting battery performance, doesn't some of the problem originate with the battery itself? Does an ATI battery and a Sony battery and a who-knows-what-brand battery all perform the same?
And what I learned recently in doing some "battery" research is, that HEAT is a bigger issue for Li batteries than anything else. So even in standby, if your Li battery and laptop are in a hot car with the windows rolled up, the battery will drain much faster than if it were on a shaded table in a coffee shop. [FACT: Short battery life in a laptop is mainly cause by heat rather than charge / discharge patterns.]
I would like to see battery ratings gain more reputable metrics. Does anyone believe the 5-hour vs 12-hour battery claims? I certainly didn't get overly excited or concerned about the new 17" MBP exaggerated battery life or the fact that the battery was "not removable." Oh MY!
And I would suspect, since it is taking me over 6 weeks from Apple's shipping date to actually receive my MBP, that there are a lot of us consumers who don't believe the stats or care to judge our next laptop by the manufacturer's claims.
Here is what I demand:
- I want the battery to last a long time. (anything beyond 2 or so hours is pretty good, but I don't travel a lot.)
- I want the battery to not die prematurely. (1 – 1.5 years seems resonable)
- and more important to me than any spec (3DMark06 or MMO7) is
- I'd really really really like the battery to be GREEN. Less lead, less bad stuff, less waste.
And then we should really think about how to cool the battery better, so my palms aren't on fire atop my 140 degree Duo, and my thighs aren't blistering red. And if we can keep it cool, while under duress (more like the 3DMark06 benchmark) guess what? It performs better and lasts longer.
Now, back to cars for a second, I understand that the Prius outside the US has been offered offered with an EV override button that forces the car to use more electric power than it does in "normal" mode. It was taken off the US models by pressure from somewhere. Not hard to imagine that lobbying pressure.
And so with my laptop I would often hit the "TURBO" switch to keep the machine running at top performance even if that meant having to keep it plugged it. But I would like a "ECO" mode as well.
The new 2010 Prius comes with three modes including "EV."
By all means, let's keep getting better and honest about our metrics. But let's not obsess about a 91 3DMark06 vs a 95 3DMark06. Quite frankly, even if you tried to explain it to me, I don't know what that 4 point 3DMark06-spread means in terms of actual battery time.
So when Apple says the new MBP I am waiting for will get 8-hours runtime (or is it 12?) I don't really know what that means. Will my Prius really get 42 city 48 hwy? I don't care. But when that "add fuel" message pops up on my laptop or my Prius then I will sit up and take immediate action.
I wrote a post about taking care of your Li battery here.
Laptop Battery Maintenance and Good Habits – Scientific Studies Reveal
And check out The Battery University for all you ever wanted to know about battery stats.
Cheers,
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/battery-specs
Tags: 3DMark06, 8 bars, amd, anticipation, battery heat, battery life, battery performance, battery specs, environmental, flashing light, fuel gauge, fuel indicator, gallon tank, gas meter, good mileage, intel, intel core duo 2, jmacofearth, laptop battery, laptop battery maintenance, li battery, mbp, MMO7, MobileMark® 2007, overnight charge, patrick morehead, prius, realworld, specs, trip meter, victory dance, your mileage may vary
May 20 2009
Good 2 Great Content – How Do You Cross Post and Promote Your Best Writing?
So we write and we write and we write. And if we work it really hard we get a hundred or so folks to visit our blog (people other than friends and family) and that's it. Done?
What are the additional options for your content? You can Tweet it. You can cross post it. You can try to get a guess writing gig on Mashable or RWW. You can chat, IM and email about it. But over the course of the last six months I have found the following alternate strategies work for me. Now there is always too much of a good thing, so with any cross posting or excerpting strategy it is best to reserve these ideas for your BEST content and not everything. Cause we all know, everything is NOT wonderful, it's miscellaneous!
inSocialMedia (a professional NING network with almost 3k members focused on Social Media for business)
Having been invited to be an Admin of inSocialMedia I can promote good posts on the front page. This week it happens to be one of mine. (grin)
+++
Posterous (a free blogging platform, easily updated via email and SMS)
One of the great features of posterous is the ability to create posts from SMS and Emails. And then there's a little "Post to elsewhere" link, seen above, that can repost to Facebook, Tumblr, Google Pages and Twitter. I often repost stuff to Posterous and use their tool to put the post on my Facebook page, my legacy Google blog and Tumblr. I usually don't use Posterous to do my Tweeting. I try to keep my Tweets under tight control.
+++
LinkedIN (posting in your status update is one technique, but the action is in the Groups)
+++
Facebook (again the wall is good, and high visibility, but the discussions in the groups, if you find a lively one, are much more interactive.
The OpenAustin facebook page started by Whurley has some active discussions about the City of Austin website controversy. If you have content that addresses an issue, you might find a group that is aligned with that issue.
+++
Specific commenting on high-value blogs
This post by Patrick Morehead of AMD has gotten thousands of views. And my comment is number one right at the bottom of the first page. Engaging with the tech community via commenting has some great advantages. The company may even take notice of you at some point. Patrick and I have become friends first via blogging and comments and at SXSWi we met face to face. I count him as a mentor and visionary. And when I see that he has posted one an important topic I will go give it a read. Sometimes I have something to add. And when I do, I may pick up a hand-full of the viewers of his original post.
+++
Best-of Tweets
Occasionally I will broadcast a Tweet with a "best of" Uber.la tag. For example I will occasionally RT my Twitter Rules AND the 1-2-3 Guide to Twitter.
+++
Collective Pages on your site. This is one of the most powerful concepts. If you look at my site, I have tried to organize it more like a web site than a blog. That's because I hope that the content I am writing is more like a book and less like a newspaper. So I have collected some of the concepts on pages that are tabs across the top of my site. One example is the InfoStreams. I am working on a series of posts on the top InfoFeed tools that I use and how I use them.
If I do my work well, the posts become chapters of that "book" or tab. And the Infostream Strategies tab becomes a reference site for people looking to get a handle on various concepts of social media. If these "posts" were burried in my "archives by date" or even tags like "twitter" or "friendfeed" it would be easy to imagine them vanishing into the blog stream and no longer being found or referenced.
That's it for now. Please add any good ideas you have and I will approve your comments here and share them with a broader audience.
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/good2great
Associated Posts:
Tags: 1-2-3 guide to twitter, alternate strategies, amd, best-of, blog commenting, conversations, crosspost, excerpt, facebook, fire everything, followers, following, friends and family, google, google pages, high value blogs, high visibility, infostream, Infostream Strategies, inSM, insocialmedia, lifestream, linkedin, lively one, mashable, patrick morehead, posterous, retweet, rss feeds, rss of life, social media strategies, tight control, tweets, twitter rules, twitter tools
View Comments