Sudden change in battery time

Hi guys,
I did a google search on this and just came up with answers/solutions that I have already tried but haven't had much luck.


I have a 2010 13" MacBook Pro.
Till about a day or two ago I use to get amazing battery performance out of the computer. I mean 8-9 hours without major issues.

Now suddenly for the last couple of days the batter life after a fully charged battery shows up as 3 hours. I can't figure out why.

1. I did calibrate the battery and that didn't help.
2. I checked the activity monitor and there isn't any unusual there.
3. I have coconut battery which says current battery capacity is 5603, original is 5770.

I have also noticed that my computer seems to be heating up a lot lately. But didn't think much of it since it's in the back of the computer where the air vents are.

Anyone have any insight or thoughts? Any recommendations or tests I can try?

The computer is less than a year old (7 months). Will Apple replace the battery for me if that's the issue?? It only has had 79 cycles.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

spinnerlys said:

I know, you have already mentioned Activity Monitor, but have a look at Activity Monitor again( Applications / Utilities / ) and select All Processes and sort by CPU to see what the culprit may be.

image below uses sorting by CPU as an example

The heat seems to indicate high CPU usage, but it may not be one of your processes.

Click to expand...

I did do that... something called "mds" shows up as 100%.

Not sure what mds is....??

I went back to the basics....

Restarted the computer.....


Things seem okay now. Battery life is climbing slowly. Computer seems to be a bit better temperature wise. Doesn't seem as hot...

This is my first mac.... Coming from a PC you'd think the first thing i'd be use to doing is "restarting"....

spinnerlys said:

If you read the link above, you will find out what "mds" does do. Sometimes it runs havoc, but after a while it will calm down.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. Really did help me out. I was scared for a moment but this has really calmed me down!

Battery is climbing further up!!!


PHEW!

Well, been using the computer all evening. It's better than before but it still doesn't seem like before. Now the battery life keeps jumping up and down. Goes up to 5-6 hours for a few moments than back to 2-3 hours, then back up and then down.....

It doesn't seem stable at all...

GGJstudios said:

Your indicated time remaining changes constantly, depending on the current load on your system. It's designed to do that.

This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions: Apple Notebook Battery FAQ

Click to expand...

Thank you for the link. I will go through it thoroughly.

As for the times changing.....I do understand that the time would change depending on the load, but in this case the time keeps changing while i'm just surfing the web and typing this post.

And it doesn't change by a little, it's going from 2.5 hours to 4.5 hours to 6 hours and then back to 4 hours to 3 hours.

So they are major jumps up and down.

GGJstudios said:

It's simply an estimate and there's a lag time between load changes and the display updating. It's not entirely accurate. Some web pages put more demand on CPU/GPU, such as flash sites. You're better off not obsessing about the reading and just use your Mac.

Click to expand...

Yes, i still have 5 months left in the warranty, so i'll just continue to use it as usual and if I see any major issues come up with the battery over the next 5 months, then I can take it in and maybe consider purchasing the Applecare warranty.


Thanks for all the help guys!