Fishy battery life/ CPU Usage on Macbook Pro

[njsa04playa]

Hey guys, lately my macbook pro has been experiencing some issues with battery life and high cpu usage even when nothing is running.

I looked at the activity monitor and two processes are hogging like 70 % and 20 % of the cpu respectively..

Anytime i quit the process it appears again a couple seconds later..

Any help?

Also right now safari is using 50 % of the cpu????

The computer in question is in my sig.

The only applications i have open are mail, activity monitor, and safari

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by njsa04playa

Hey guys, lately my macbook pro has been experiencing some issues with battery life and high cpu usage even when nothing is running.

I looked at the activity monitor and two processes are hogging like 70 % and 20 % of the cpu respectively.

Spotlight is indexing your drive(s), so searching for items will be faster. After it's done, your system resources will be freed up. Plug it in if your battery is running low. When Also Spotlight is indexing, it is evidenced by the mds process, which can peg CPU utilization.
You can also determine if it's indexing by the Menu Bar icon: (not indexing) (indexing)

[gorskiegangsta]

This is why:

[naix]

u should go to system preference and disable indexing. It lowers cpu temp.

Or you could download onyx and disable indexing at startup.

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by naix

u should go to system preference and disable indexing. It lowers cpu temp.

Or you could download onyx and disable indexing at startup.

There is no need to disable indexing. Just let it finish the process. It doesn't index at startup. It indexes a drive one time, then maintains that index as files are created/modified/deleted. If you disable indexing, you won't be able to find things when you search for them, or searches will take much longer to process.

[njsa04playa]

thanks for the quick replies everybody. Thats a good thing to know. But another issue is 3:00 battery life on a full charge with barely anything open?

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by njsa04playa

thanks for the quick replies everybody. Thats a good thing to know. But another issue is 3:00 battery life on a full charge with barely anything open?

It's because something IS open. The indexing is a process that is placing demands on your system and power consumption. When the process finishes, you should get much more life from a charge. To see all processes that are running, launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes".

Also, you may benefit from reading the "BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE" section of the following link. This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:

Apple Notebook Battery FAQ

[njsa04playa]

Originally Posted by GGJstudios

It's because something IS open. The indexing is a process that is placing demands on your system and power consumption. When the process finishes, you should get much more life from a charge. To see all processes that are running, launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes".

Also, you may benefit from reading the "BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE" section of the following link. This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:

Apple Notebook Battery FAQ

ahh that reveals many more processes.. what is backupd and another one.. mds?

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by njsa04playa

ahh that reveals many more processes.. what is backupd and another one.. mds?

mds: did you read my first post?
backupd: Time Machine backup daemon.

Understand Mac OS X processes