Laptop Performance Setting Question

[ineedsleep]

Hello all. I own a Powerbook that is set on the "Better Performance" setting nearly all of the time. A friend of mine with a Mac Book Pro told me that it's unhealthy to keep the laptop set to "Better Performance" for long periods of time. Is this true, or is it a load of bull?

[Garry]

I suspect people will give you different answers on this one but in my opinion it's complete bull. It's just a setting designed to maximise how long your battery will last on a single charge.

[Huy]

I think what you're thinking of Garry is "Better Energy Savings" which maximises the amount of time you can use the battery (puts display to sleep earlier, etc).

I have mine set to "Better Performance" all the time and it doesn't really do anything, in my opinion (in terms of killing the laptop).

If you're paranoid about it, you can set it to "Normal" and then change it whenever you want to, but swap back? That would be rather annoying... just leave it. I think it will be fine. Mine has been running like this for over 21 months.

[Roger H. Veteran]

well the reason anyone would say that is cuz the system runs at full power/speed. Heat is never good for the system so high temperatures can shorten system life by up to 25%.

It's like running a car at 6000RPM vs 2000RPM. Which you think is gonna run longer (not talking about gas and all that - just the actual engine burning up)

Running your Macbook in Best Performance mode keeps the CPU at full speed which is what it's designed for but in laptops, space is cramped and so is air circulation. So while your system wont die tomorrow, the heat definitely doesn't help. Isn't that the reason we are so concerned about temps (CPU, GPU, HD and even Memory these days? Notebook Hardware Control and other software checks temps for all of that)

And yeah, battery life will suck cuz of it but i don't think you worry about that :) I keep my Vista Thinkpad T60 at the "Balanced" setting. If i'm doing something that needs more power out of the 2Ghz Core Duo then it will speed up but if not it runs at 1Ghz like now when i'm just typing and reading.

[CPressland]

It's bull, all the power settings in Mac OS X do is manage sleep time and stuff, the operating system handles the underclocking and stuff all on it's own.

Running the MacBook in Best Performance will not change the CPU speed at all. To prove this, download SMCFanControl to keep and eye on the temps and experiment with different power settings, you'll see the temps remain the same regardless of setting.