iPhone Batteriness

Ok, so I grabbed a new 3GS iPhone on day one of its release, switching from a 4gb original iPhone. Obviously I am very pleased with the general speed of the 3GS. I love that the performance of my already owned apps has dramatically increased in speed. Having 3G has also been a more-than-welcome network speed increase as well. iPhone OS 3.0 has brought the phone up to par with all smart phones by adding a ton of great additions to functionality. (cut and paste is FANTASTICALLY implemented.) So what is my number one complaint about the 3GS?

Just like most of you out there, the number one complaint I have thus far is battery life. My original iPhone’s battery lasted me all day on moderate to heavy use. I wouldn’t have to charge the battery until I came home from my 8 to 10 hour work days, which seemed like a problem to me at the time. I was excited to think that my 3GS would outlast the original iPhone. I mean, Apple did indeed tout greater battery life at the WWDC Keynote address, right? Well I am here to state that they were so so very wrong as far as I am concerned. I now leave for work in the am, with the same amount of use and I have to recharge the battery at about 1pm, as it is half-way spent by then. I have noticed that after the half-way mark, the battery drains rapidly from then on. Half-way spent by 1pm?! That is better battery life? Even with location services, 3G and wifi turned off on my 3GS, my girlfriend’s 3G iPhone with all network and location services on, still outlasts my 3GS. This, my friends, is a sad statement about the new 3GS’ battery life.

However, my girlfriend’s 3G is getting less battery time then it did before updating it to 3.0. Does this suggest that Apple failed to optimize the performance of the new iPhone OS? At first I was convinced I had a malfunctioning iPhone, it just seemed wrong how fast the battery would run dry. All posted specs on the 3GS seemed to point to a longer battery life. Those who have cracked open the phone have reported that the battery is 6% larger physically than the 3G’s battery. Which would suggest that it would have a greater life span. I was convinced that my 3GS was a lemon, not an Apple. Matter of fact I am still uncertain what the real case is. Another oddity is that the performance of my girlfriend’s 3G, with iPhone 3.0 running, has become more sluggish then before the software update. Which may be a signal that the culprit is indeed iPhone OS 3.0 not being properly optimized.

Now, I fully understand that it is a new OS and a new piece of hardware, and they have bugs to work out. Apple, more than most computer companies, is very fast at releasing updates and bug fixes. As I understand iPhone OS 3.1 has been seeded to developers already, which backs my belief that they are working on fixes. I am pinning much hope that they are indeed going to address this battery catastrophe in OS 3.1. I do hope that I am not let down by the mothership.

So, my questions to you are:

Do you have a 3GS? Are you experiencing horrifying battery life? Do you think it’s the phone or the OS? Are you hoping for a remedy with OS 3.1 too? What are us rabid iPhone owners to do??

Let me know your thoughts please…

Thank you in advance! DandyMac is off to save Mac users from their troubles.

Maconomics

As it stands in our current economic climate here in the good `ol US of A, we are almost all strapped for cash. I would guess that there are a bunch of us out there that would really like to get a new Mac with a bigger hard drive that might even be faster, I mean really who wouldn’t? Trouble with that is that a new Mac is pretty expensive, which is not easy to swing these days. What is one to do?

Well, I will tell you exactly what you can do, and I do this all day every day for people just like you. The most affordable way of achieving the bigger hard drive and more speed is to upgrade what you already have. This can be done for a fraction of the cost of a new computer. In many cases it will run about $300-400. Most people I talk to are surprised that it can even be done, let alone how much cheaper it is than buying a new Mac.

So what can be done to an older Mac? The first thing you most likely want is the bigger hard drive. Having more room for all of your files, music, movies, photos, applications and everything you download is always a good thing. Depending on what type of Mac you have, you can go as high as 1 terabyte, which is a LARGE amount of storage space. To give you an idea of how much it would cost to upgrade the hard drive in your older (or even newer) Mac, it would cost about $50 for an 80-gigabyte drive and up to $100 for a 500-gigabyte drive for a Mac laptop, depending on the model. If you have a desktop Mac it can be an even cheaper upgrade and you can add much more space: up to 1 terabyte for as little as $119. Installation should run about $100 or less depending on what kind of Mac you own. So for less than around $200 you can have a much larger hard drive for storage. (prices gathered from http://www.otherworldcomputing.com )

The next thing you can do to give that old Mac some new life is upgrade your RAM. RAM stands for random access memory and it serves two basic functions. The first is it allows you to open more applications at the same time without bogging down your workflow. The second thing it does is add more speed to the Mac. The two in conjunction really makes a huge difference in your Mac’s performance. Again, this is a rather cheap investment that really pays off. For example if you have an iBook G4 (purchased in late 2004) you can max out your RAM to 1.25 gigabytes for $50 (OWC), if you have a 2.4ghz MacBook Pro (late 2007-early 2008) you can max our your RAM to 4 gigabytes for $60 (OWC). Installation on most Macs is very simple and you can find instructions at otherworldcomputing.com as well. I cannot recommend this upgrade strongly enough, you will love your old Mac all over again!

The final thing I can recommend to spruce up the old Mac is to upgrade the system software. The system software is how your computer runs, it’s also what gives your computer more functionality and features.  This upgrade can be a bit more of a challenge because not all Macs can be upgraded to the latest operating system from Apple (OSX 10.5 Leopard). To make things more challenging it is rather difficult to find the operating systems prior to the latest. If your Mac is under ten years old, odds are you can run up to OSX 10.4 Tiger. (Because this is an older operating system it is more costly than the latest operating system. I ran a Google search for it and found this to be the cheapest: (OS X 10.4), although I do not know about the reliability of the source.) If you have a Mac that has an 867 mhz processor or greater and at least 512mb of RAM ( you can find out what processor speed and how mach RAM you have by clicking the little Apple menu in the upper left corner of your desktop, then click ‘About This Mac’) you can upgrade to the latest from Apple OS X 10.5 Leopard for about $129. I do not recommend doing this yourself unless you really know what you are doing,  have done it before, and have backed up your data.

Before you go running out and buying these products it is essential that you know what kind of Mac you have and how far it can be upgraded. There are many variables involved in picking the right parts to upgrade to. That said, I recommend talking to someone like DandyMac (shameless self-plug!) who is a certified Apple Technician and Consultant before making purchases. Buying the wrong parts and trying to install them can be disappointing and even dangerous.

So for now save yourself some cash in these hard times and upgrade that older Mac. You will make you and it much happier by doing so. In these trying Maconomic times you can extend the life of your older Mac with very little expense and start saving for your next new mac at the same time. As a small hint to those of you who can actually afford to get a new Mac, I would strongly suggest that you hold off until the next round of hardware updates are released before you buy a laptop. The desktops are the way to go right now if you are considering buying new.

UPDATE: During my nromal morning scouring of my favorite mac news sites I stumbled upon this article from Macworld .com:    Opinon: Which is better for your business, a Mac or a PC? This guy has his own take on the economic times we are in and how his choice of computer helped his company. Perhaps a bit off the topic but it’s still great!