hn battery

Apple’s newest aluminum MacBook Pros are pretty slick in most regards, but some investigative folks had discovered what they believed to be a shortcoming in the models: in some units the SATA drive interface ran at a mere measly 1.5Gbps when even its predecessor, the non-Pro 13-inch MacBook, supported double that speed.

Owners of MacBook Pros that shipped with solid-state drives (SSD), meanwhile, reported that they had the 3Gbps interface, leading many to scratch their heads at the inconsistency. (Never mind that the traditional hard drives in the affected models can’t even take advantage of the 3Gbps speeds.)

Apple on Monday moved to correct that matter by issuing a firmware update for the June 2009 MacBook Pros. MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.7 lets those MacBook Pros use the 3Gbps specification, though Apple also warns that it has not offered drives that support the faster speeds–all previous and current MacBooks use 1.5Gbps drives–so the use of faster drives remains unsupported. The download is 3.35MB and requires Mac OS X 10.5.7.

Apple also issued an iMac EFI Firmware 1.4 Update for 20-inch and 24-inch early 2009 iMacs, which fixes problems where machines using ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics cards would intermittently stop responding, as well as issues with waking from sleep while in Boot Camp. It’s a 1.7MB download that requires Mac OS X 10.5.6 or later.

Computers, copiers and printers sold the European Union and the U.S. will have to become more energy-efficient from next month in order to gain Energy Star approval, following an agreement signed Wednesday by the European Commission and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The energy savings from the new specifications for home and office equipment are expected to total 22TWh (terawatt hour) over the four- to six-year lifetime of the products — roughly equivalent to Ireland’s total annual energy consumption, the Commission said in a statement.

The list of machines currently approved under the E.U.-U.S. Energy Star scheme includes 70 desktop PC brands, 43 laptops and tablet PCs, 18 copiers, 32 printers, 19 scanners and 14 fax machines.

“The new criteria are an important contribution to reach the E.U.’s energy efficiency targets,” said the European energy commissioner Andris Pielbags.

Computers are expected to account for most of the savings: 18 TWh out of the 22 TWh target, the Commission said.The E.U.-U.S. Energy Star scheme will in future be extended to cover other product categories including servers, data storage equipment and video games consoles.