New to Mac, 2 quick questions

dory

Hello.

I used mac before, but my last laptop was a Samsung so I feel a bit new again.

Two things;

1. The battery is terrible (13'' Macbook Pro, 2.4ghz, 4GB refurb). It said it would last 7 hours, I was hoping for 5 at least. If I'm lucky I get three. And this is just three internet/typing. Less if I'm watching a video (laptop is around a month old now).

2. Is there a button to press to get rid of all windows and just see the desktop?

Thanks! I did check stickies but didn't see anything.

KeithM89_old

CMD - F3 is to clear all the windows to the side but im not sure whats wrong with the battery - you definitely should be getting more than 3 hours

Sad Professor

dory wrote: »

1. The battery is terrible (13'' Macbook Pro, 2.4ghz, 4GB refurb). It said it would last 7 hours, I was hoping for 5 at least. If I'm lucky I get three. And this is just three internet/typing. Less if I'm watching a video (laptop is around a month old now).

There's something eating up the battery. Open up Activity Monitor (in Applications > Utilities) and see if there's a background process using a lot of CPU. Somebody else had this problem recently and it was printer software. Flash video is very heavy on the CPU as well.

Download CoconutBattery to check the health of the battery:

http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

2. Is there a button to press to get rid of all windows and just see the desktop?

A few ways of doing this. Best way is Exposé. You can set it up in System Preferences. You could also use Spaces - set the finder to a certain space and set everything else to another. That way when you click on the Finder you get just the desktop. You should familiarise yourself with Exposé and Spaces, they are very useful features for managing windows and applications

DualFrontDiscs

Sad Professor wrote: »

Best way is Exposé. You can set it up in System Preferences. You could also use Spaces - set the finder to a certain space and set everything else to another. That way when you click on the Finder you get just the desktop. You should familiarise yourself with Exposé and Spaces, they are very useful features for managing windows and applications

Exposé and Spaces rock! I'm using Parallels and VirtualBox for virtualisation and I assign each VM its own desktop. Keeps things very clean.

DFD.

dory

Thanks guys. Right now I have Activity Monitor open. It says Firefox is taking up 12% and Skype 5% . I always have Skype on. Could that be a problem? I have about 20 other things running apparently (not programs I have heard of) but they're all at 0.0%.
I'll try the coconut thing.

fergusb

dory wrote: »

Thanks guys. Right now I have Activity Monitor open. It says Firefox is taking up 12% and Skype 5% . I always have Skype on. Could that be a problem? I have about 20 other things running apparently (not programs I have heard of) but they're all at 0.0%.
I'll try the coconut thing.

12% for Firefox is quite high! I've gone back to Safari on Mac and find its much better than Firefox (in work still use firefox on Windows tho but definitely on Mac find safari better).

I sometimes find as well that certain websites which use flash, or flash popups etc cause higher CPU usage (on safari as well). This definitely could be impacting your battery life.

Also Skype using 5% is also quite high I think. Skype should be only using 1/2% especially if its not being used for a call or chat at the time. The other 20+ processes are generally just OSX processes so wouldn't worry about them especially if no using any CPU.

dory

This is what I got from Coconut fella. So, 95% after three months isn't so bad I suppose. I presume the other two months are from when it was with its other owner. I got it pretty cheap (€970) so can't complain really. I suppose if it really starts to bother me I can pick up another one.

dory

fergusb wrote: »

12% for Firefox is quite high! I've gone back to Safari on Mac and find its much better than Firefox (in work still use firefox on Windows tho but definitely on Mac find safari better).

I sometimes find as well that certain websites which use flash, or flash popups etc cause higher CPU usage (on safari as well). This definitely could be impacting your battery life.

Also Skype using 5% is also quite high I think. Skype should be only using 1/2% especially if its not being used for a call or chat at the time. The other 20+ processes are generally just OSX processes so wouldn't worry about them especially if no using any CPU.

Hmm...ok. I can understand Firefox as I'm using it for work and need to have at least 10 pages open at once, and then more for my own personal stuff. I don't know how to get Skype down. I only have one conversation ever open.

cozzie55

Change the settings for the battery life in the system perferences. Make sure to use "Better Battery life" instead of "custom" or "normal settings". I get an extra hour out of my battery just by changing to "better battery life".;)

Sad Professor

Is the screen brightness up high?

Hobbes

fergusb wrote: »

12% for Firefox is quite high!

I had the same deal and switched back to Safari. It is like FF+Safari swapped speeds for me.

Also Skype using 5% is also quite high I think.

Skype is P2P. So if it sees it is on a good machine it can act as a node for others. But should behave for laptops though.