SlashGear Japan
Now this is just plain strange. Apparently the latest Apple MacBook line is showing off some seriously unusual behavior. In fact, the entire system gets bogged down when the battery is removed. How’s that for strange?
It seems these new unibody systems cut back on the processor performance whenever relying on AC power alone. The idea behind this is doing so will protect the system in case a shutdown occurs when the user does not want it to when, let’s say, the notebook is trying to pull too much power from an outlet.
And if this were just a small performance dip, it would be no big deal. However, it drops the system down to 63% of its supposed performance. This is definitely not good. If the battery dies, then what? Your computer will always run at 40% the capacity it’s supposed to? Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is big, right?
7 Responses to “MacBooks get performance slump when battery is removed”
JohnBlue November 21, 2008
no.
if it’s plugged in… the battery is charging.
if the entire battery died, you’re going to get a new one.
…. I don’t see where the problem is.
It’s honestly not a problem at all. Think about it a little more and it will make sense darling.
-3Chris November 22, 2008
Hasn’t this always this been a feature with macbook’s? It’s why I don’t remove the battery of mine.
Neutralkelly November 22, 2008
um, a lot of laptop manufacturers do the exact same thing, this is old news. my dell at work has a 65w power adapter for travel, but a bigger gi-normous one to use with a dock… if you use the smaller adapter without the battery, same thing, you’ll hit a performance block… and my dell doesn’t have a huge power sucking discrete video card.
I’m missing the purpose of wanting to use it without the battery somehow however…. what’s the benefit you would get?
NeutralChris November 22, 2008
Leaving the laptop plugged in with the battery in place will cause the batteries lifespan to decay.
Neutralkelly November 22, 2008
a $90 battery and you’re going to take it out everytime you’re plugged in to extend it’s life a month? have fun with all that.
NeutralEwdison Then November 22, 2008
A flaw in engineering is worth noting, like it or not.
Neutralkelly November 23, 2008
just pointing out, i know not one person that takes out their laptop batteries to save battery life. bought a macbook pro but not exactly a fanboy (first mac in 15 years), and not my primary machine, still using a dell notebook at work and gaming desktop at home. don’t know I would call it a “flaw in engineering” btw, that’s the way it’s been since G4s, and it’s well known to be the same for various brands of PC notebooks… unadvertised “feature” possibly, but probably fairly well considered in design discussions.
out of curiosity, I did run a benchmark on an alienware 9750 with and w/o battery tho (dual 8700GTs), no difference. the power brick does approach the size of a cinder block however.
Neutral