Battery Life tracking

[ExcelonGT]

Ever since I upgraded to Lion, I've seen my 2010 MBP take a hit in battery life.

2010 MBP, i7, 8gb, 256gb SSD.

with Snow Leopard, I would average 4.5-5.5 hours on the battery
with Lion, it seems to be 2.5-3.5 hours on the battery

Im trying to monitor the system as best as I can to see if a process is running the CPU high. But I'm not able to find anything that stands out. I 'upgraded' from SL and am experiencing the general sluggishness and high RAM usage a bunch of other people are experiencing.

My brother who has an 2011 MBP i5, 750GB claims to be averaging 7-8 hours battery consistently. He did say he runs on the integrated GPU 90% of the time, whereas I am on the discrete GPU 90% of the time. Could this difference account for the big disparity in both our Battery Life?

Is there any software utility I can install which would track all my battery cycles, show me the drain times for each cycle, and how much juice was left when I recharged. I am looking to quantify my "battery life issues"

 

[Young Spade]

1) The initial install results in bad life due to indexing of spotlight and other things. That should stop within a day or two.

2) Discrete graphics card uses more energy. Search the forums on info for this. Gfxcardstatus or something like that is what you need.

3)Coconutbattery. Google that, get that. Check the health.

4) Lion is more cpu intensive due to the UI and stuff like that. You can still get long hours, but it's a bit more demanding than SL across the board.

 

[Cougarcat]

My brother who has an 2011 MBP i5, 750GB claims to be averaging 7-8 hours battery consistently. He did say he runs on the integrated GPU 90% of the time, whereas I am on the discrete GPU 90% of the time. Could this difference account for the big disparity in both our Battery Life?

Possibly. Are you taxing the GPU when you're using it, i.e playing games?

For what it's worth, my 2010 C2D MBP has experienced around a 20% hit in battery life, and I have no discrete graphics.

Is there any software utility I can install which would track all my battery cycles, show me the drain times for each cycle, and how much juice was left when I recharged. I am looking to quantify my "battery life issues"

Coconutbattery will do a few of those things.

 

[killerrobot]

If you spend a lot of time on the net, FF instantly switches to the discrete card upon opening while Safari uses the integrated. A lot of other programs might cause the same behavior and therefore less battery life.

As Young Spade pointed out use the gfxcardstatus app and take notice of when your discrete card is in us vs the integrated.

 

[ExcelonGT]

If you spend a lot of time on the net, FF instantly switches to the discrete card upon opening while Safari uses the integrated. A lot of other programs might cause the same behavior and therefore less battery life.

As Young Spade pointed out use the gfxcardstatus app and take notice of when your discrete card is in us vs the integrated.

Ive been using gfxcardstatus since it came out last year. What i'm trying to say is that even with SL, I used to be on the discrete GPU majority of the time and would see 5 hours of battery when safaring, email, Skype, and tweet deck. Now with Lion, I have never have seen 4 hours.

thanks for the tip on Coconut battery, but it still isn't what Im looking for. its more of a glorified battery status monitor. What I am looking for is something that tracks my battery usage historically over many cycles.

 

[killerrobot]

Ive been using gfxcardstatus since it came out last year. What i'm trying to say is that even with SL, I used to be on the discrete GPU majority of the time and would see 5 hours of battery when safaring, email, Skype, and tweet deck. Now with Lion, I have never have seen 4 hours.

Ok - two other suggestions- reset the PMU/SMC as suggested in this blog
http://blog.howardtang.com/2011/07/a-fixed-for-mac-os-x-lion-reduces-battery-life/

Perhaps this program, Watts, will track/record all the battery stats. I've never used it but it might be worth a shot.
http://download.cnet.com/Watts/3000-20430_4-75285512.html
EDIT: Just installed it and it seems you have to record the percentage manually.