The new MacBooks hidden USB C benefit may be battery power

The new MacBooks hidden USB C benefit may be battery power

If youre a road warrior worried that the 9-hour advertised battery life of Apples new MacBook falls short of the 10 hours on the 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, you may be able to lay that fear to rest.

A hidden and unadvertised benefit to Apples switch to the USB-C connector on the new MacBook over MagSafe on older models is that you may be able to buy an external battery pack or power bank.

Similar to how smartphone owners can recharge their phones with an external battery pack, a power bank allows MacBook owners to recharge their laptop if they arent near a power outlet.

"Most accessories supporting the USB Type-C specifications should work with your new MacBook," 9to5Mac wrote of the new port. "Apple wont be doing anything to block any specific types of accessories - in fact, it will even allow external batteries or other Macs to charge the new MacBook."

This would be a drastic change from Apple, which is not only moving away from its proprietary MagSafe charging connector, but is also opening up its laptops to third-party charging solutions. In the past, Apple thwarted third-party battery packs like Hyper Juice that utilize non-licensed MagSafe charging tips to connect to a MacBook Air or Pro.

More power

Enterprise users will find support for external battery packs extremely useful. Many enterprise workstations and laptops designed for field use come with a user-replaceable battery. When the notebook runs out of power, users can swap a dead battery for a new one and continue working.

However, given that Apples notebooks come with a sealed battery, this isnt a possibility. For workers in the field, carrying a single external battery pack or multiple packs would allow them to have a system that runs longer than the 9-hour battery life from the internal battery.

The downside with USB-C is that it may not automatically unlatch from the MacBook if, for example, someone trips on the cord.

A benefit that Apple promotes with MagSafe is that if someone trips over your power cord, the magnet from the MagSafe cable would unlatch from the notebook. By having the cable automatically unhook from the laptop, your laptop wouldnt crash on the ground.

USB-C Standard

With the USB-C port on the new MacBook, Apple is not only replacing the MagSafe charging port: its also replacing standard USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports as well as display-out ports. The port can be used to connect peripherals like external drives, keyboards, monitors and displays.

In adapting the new standard, Apple also dropped existing ports like traditional USB, Thunderbolt and Mini DisplayPort. This means that you can only have one thing plugged into the USB port at any given time so you cant charge the notebook and connect a hard drive unless you buy an adapter or hub.

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The Infamous battery re calibration bug in Lenovo Thinkpad

The Infamous battery re calibration bug in Lenovo Thinkpad

My brand new Lenovo Thinkpad is a beast and is supposed to give up to 8hrs of battery backup. But there was a weird problem. As soon as the battery remaining reached 30%, it used to drop to 6% in a second. When I looked up on google, I found out that I was not the only one facing this problem. Most of them suggested that my battery was shot and that I had to buy a new one. This is highly improbable as it is brand new. I wanted to give fixing it a try before contacting customer care. And I was successful!

Before - See the battery percentage drop from 30% to 6%

For some reason, I suspected that it was somehow TLPs fault. TLP is the best power management utility for Thinkpad in Linux. It allows you to set max charging threshold so that you will be able to connect your laptop to the plug point without worrying about over charging (among many other features it provides). I felt that it is because of this, battery calibration was getting screwed up. So I set the maximum threshold to 100%.

Open /etc/default/tlp and set following variables.

START_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0=100

STOP_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0=100

Then I restarted my laptop to bring this to effect. As the calibration was already offset by a great extent, the only way to fix it was to keep it charged for a long time. I kept it charging for almost a day.

After - Fixed!

 Then to test it I kept discharging it. And to my surprise, it didnt drop from 30% to 6% this time!!

So the problem was with calibration and not because the battery is broken. If you face this problem, you can try this solution once before you spend $$$ on buying a new battery.

Now that I have changed the battery threshold back to 85%, if this problem occurs again, all I have to do is follow the above steps.

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