OK, so I just got my new macbook pro on Monday, and it’s pretty darn cool so far. I’m having a little bit of trouble getting real work done because I’m a long way from linux-land and am still accumulating applications that I use to do my job. Let’s face it, I’m also a little bit distracted by all of the shiny, gooey, sappy goodness that is the mac OS X interface.Â
What I’m testing out right now is a Dashboard widget that let’s me easily type up and edit this blog, and publish it without ever opening a browser (well, I hope that’s what it does – hence the test). Dashboard is neat – you hit F12, and it puts your desktop in the background and bring a whole bunch of little mini tools and applications to the foreground, like a dictionary lookup tool, a calculator, a weather forecast, etc. There are thousands of these widgets available, many of which do next to nothing, but I grabbed widgets for doing wordpress and blogger posts, a measurement units converter (handy for brewing), and an application that helps me to find wireless networks ;-) Â
Well – all this blogging and I’m still only down to
48% battery. For the past 90 minutes I’ve been streaming music from iTunes to my AirTunes express connected to my home entertainment system, downloading large applications that I need (like Parallels Desktop for OS X), installing them, running the PhotoBooth application (which uses the built in video camera), installing software off of a CD for my digital camera, importing pictures from the camera, and basically trying to do everything I can to make sure my battery runs out, which is something you should do once every month or so to calibrate the battery (read your manual – it says so right there). Also, the thing is on “Better Performance” – not “Battery Life” or whatever the power-sipping setting is. I want this thing to die! After 90 minutes of resource abuse, it’s probably safe to say I’ll be pleased with the battery life, especially since I’m coming from a behemouth 17″ laptop that had about 75 minutes of battery life just sitting idle!Â