Geek Posted March 19, 2011 Posted March 19, 2011 <div class="KonaBody"><p><img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/lion-improves-battery-life.jpg" alt="lion-improves-battery-life" title="lion-improves-battery-life" width="601" height="300" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-14059" /></p> <p>When was the last time an operating system update gave you <em>more battery life</em>? I can’t remember that ever happening, but here I am running the dev preview of <a href="http://osxdaily.com/category/mac-os-x/">Mac OS X</a> Lion and I have longer battery life than I do running another OS.</p> <p>I can’t vouch for all Macs, but on my MacBook Air 11.6″ base model with the screen brightness set to half and running <a href="http://osxdaily.com/tag/mac-os-x-10-7/">Mac OS X 10.7 Lion</a> it’s squeezing out 8 hours of battery life with 91% charge remaining. That is about an hour longer than Apples suggested max battery life on the 11.6″ Air, and nearly 3 hours longer than I get in 10.6 Snow Leopard under similar usage conditions.</p> <p>It was just last week that I took a screenshot of <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2011/03/14/show-remaining-battery-life-in-the-mac-os-x-menu-bar/">battery life in this menubar tip</a>. This is the same MacBook Air, same brightness settings, same apps open, the only difference is Mac OS X 10.6.6, where it shows 5 hours of battery remaining at a 95% charge:</p> <p><img alt="mac-battery-life" src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/show-battery-life-remaining.jpg" class="aligncenter" width="463" height="187" /></p> <p>Is this just a fluke? Maybe Lion calculates remaining battery life differently, or maybe there is a fundamental change in how Mac OS X Lion manages power? I don’t have an answer, but my anecdotal evidence shows that I get significantly more battery life out of <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2011/02/24/mac-os-x-10-7-lion-developer-preview-download/">Lion Developer Preview</a> than I do in Snow Leopard. I’ve continued to test this and even after increasing machine activity, CPU load, and screen brightness, the MacBook Air continues to show the same results.</p> <p>The more I use the developer preview, the more I like it. If you’re a developer and you haven’t used it yet, <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2011/03/12/how-to-install-dual-boot-mac-os-x-10-7-lion-and-10-6-snow-leopard/">install Lion on another partition and dual boot your Mac</a>, there isn’t much to lose. For the rest of you, you can either register for the developer program and pay $99 for access, or you can just wait until <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2010/10/20/mac-os-x-10-7-lion-release-date-summer-2011/">Summer for the release</a> and <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2011/03/16/mac-os-x-lion-10-7-video-preview-feature-walkthrough/">watch this 16 minute Mac OS X 10.7 video walkthrough</a> in the meantime to get a good feel for the new OS.</p> </div> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/bvXnsMtHrw7TuS4FhCNYKZsSAxM/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/bvXnsMtHrw7TuS4FhCNYKZsSAxM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/bvXnsMtHrw7TuS4FhCNYKZsSAxM/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/bvXnsMtHrw7TuS4FhCNYKZsSAxM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=OEWN1gjpINg:c-eFpUkvpEo:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=OEWN1gjpINg:c-eFpUkvpEo:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?i=OEWN1gjpINg:c-eFpUkvpEo:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=OEWN1gjpINg:c-eFpUkvpEo:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?i=OEWN1gjpINg:c-eFpUkvpEo:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=OEWN1gjpINg:c-eFpUkvpEo:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=OEWN1gjpINg:c-eFpUkvpEo:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/osxdaily/~4/OEWN1gjpINg" height="1" width="1"/> View the full article
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