[vov]

Hi Friends!

We plan very long sailing passage, when every Ah important :-)

Do You have any idea how reduce MacBook Pro power consumption?

Yes we have solar and wind charger, but it still for 24x7 it not enough.

I test - if I remove battery it's reduce power for 1A, it's good, but may be anybody has another idea?

regards, Vladimir

[Jade]

I have an extra Mac PowerBook battery on board. By the early afternoon, the house batteries are usually recharged so I recharge both laptop batteries with the excess solar panel amps then. That gives me about 8 hours of unplugged runtime overnight.

I have also replaced all light bulbs with LEDs and use the masthead trilight while sailing instead of the side and stern running lights which reduces the draw significantly.

[antipole]

Vov...

I upgraded from a 13" plastic MacBook to a 15" MacBook Pro with Retina display, which also has a SSD. Not cheap, I know. The overall power consumption of this new system is quite a bit less than my old MacBook.

Also, if I am feeling short on power I turn down the screen brightness. I also have a useful extension gfxCardStatus which indicates which graphics process the MacBook Pro is using. I have found some applications use the external graphics processor and quitting any such unnecessary applications switches the system back to the internal graphics processor, reducing power consumption.

regards

[vov]

I have both:

MacBook Pro 13" - now without battery installed as Navigation
MacBook 15" Retina

Both with SSD, 8 and 16Gb RAM
Power consumption of first at least 30% less than other (up to 50%), but still 3-3,5A

I have installed solar panels and wind-charger - but it's not enough for all tasks on sailing boat (radio, AIS, all sensors, light and etc).

This is not a problem on coastal trip, but start be serious on long passages.