MacBook Pro: How to reduce a battery load as fast as possible?

Question

I have some battery problems with my MacBook Pro so i found out, that a battery calibration might be helpful (my battery has only 300 cycles jet.) The apple support advice (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490)

First I have to charge it full, then rest, then use all the battery have. So my question is how to reduce the battery as fast as possible. using much power by working is one way, but can't the machine do this. I think arround nested for-loops, but might there are better ways.

thanks for your creative ideas Simon

Answer 1

This should peg your CPU at 100% with no problem. That should cause some heat generation and then your fans will kick in. The only downside is that your computer will become next to un-usable.

Code is C#:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    int a = 0;

    while(true)
    {
        if(a == 0)
        {
            Thread t = new Thread(() =>
            {
                while (true)
                {
                    a = 1;
                }
            });

            t.Start();
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

I found running the fans at maximum speed was a fairly fast way to drain the batteries. You'll probably need an external app to do that (I used http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23137/fan-control). Try to max both the fan and cpu speed and that should do the trick.

Answer 3

in a few different terminal tabs, type

echo 'scale=100000; 4 * a(1)' | bc -l

might as well compute some pi while draining the battery

Answer 4

In the Powah programming language:

Jets.MaximumBurn()!

Answer 5

Besides just CPU usage remember any wireless will also drain the battery pretty fast. If you have a wireless card download a linux distro. If you have bluetooth sync a big file with your phone.

Adjust power settings to not let monitor turn off, display can be a huge drain. Plug in as many external USB devices as you can which use power.

There's a ton of things you an do besides just running the CPU at max.

Answer 6

Something that puts your laptop CPU at 100% for hours is also likely to overheat it if you aren't careful. I would also avoid anything that writes to the hard disk because you don't want it active when the machine runs out of juice. Just pop in a DVD an put it on repeat. Spinning the disk and displaying video are good draws. Also set the display brightness to maximum (In my experience the display uses the most power after the CPU.)

Answer 7

Put your brightness at maximum and turn Bluetooth on. Stream a lot of YouTube videos and play some graphic-intensive Flash games to pass the time.