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13" MBP - Questionable Battery Life

ubercool said:
I have the uMB and I can tell you that five hours is simply hype. A genius told me to expect not much more than 2:30 and the best I've ever done is 3:30, after repairing permissions, and cranking brightness all the way down and with BT and WiFi off.

I wouldn't expect anyone to ever approach 7 hours and I'm not surprised that typical use will mean a little over four hours. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

What application(s) are you running and what's the CPU load (Activity Monitor)? I have a UB 17", which has a comparable battery and predicted life. I got 6:24 - BT off, no word processing, Mail checking every 5 min, Safari surfing and 4 iPhone syncs. Some periods of idle, but no sleep or display sleep.
 
gr8tfly said:
What application(s) are you running and what's the CPU load (Activity Monitor)? I have a UB 17", which has a comparable battery and predicted life. I got 6:24 - BT off, no word processing, Mail checking every 5 min, Safari surfing and 4 iPhone syncs. Some periods of idle, but no sleep or display sleep.
Click to expand...
What brightness setting?
 
picklesmand said:
You should only do this every month - two months, btw. It doesn't improve the health of the battery (just normal light discharges down to around 50% does that).
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So, if you only do this once every month or two, what do you do the rest of the time? How far do you let it go before charging? Only plug in when it is actually in need of a charge or while using it? Shut down when not in use or just sleep?
 
gr8tfly said:
What application(s) are you running and what's the CPU load (Activity Monitor)? I have a UB 17", which has a comparable battery and predicted life. I got 6:24 - BT off, no word processing, Mail checking every 5 min, Safari surfing and 4 iPhone syncs. Some periods of idle, but no sleep or display sleep.
Click to expand...

are there any tweaks or anything you changed to get such good battery life?
 
One important thing to note, and this was the case for the previous 17 inch that first introduced the built-in battery, is that if apple says it will get X hours of battery life, it usually will get 1 to 2 hours less than that.

My 15 inch mbp (replaceable battery) has gotten 3:40 a few times with minimal use, normally I get around 3:10 with heavy use now. And I believe they rated it at 5 hours. I would like to know how they did that... maybe in sleep? :D
 
ubercool said:
I have the uMB and I can tell you that five hours is simply hype. A genius told me to expect not much more than 2:30 and the best I've ever done is 3:30, after repairing permissions, and cranking brightness all the way down and with BT and WiFi off.

I wouldn't expect anyone to ever approach 7 hours and I'm not surprised that typical use will mean a little over four hours. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

The old or the new one?
 
Here's what I got when I turned off both Airport and Bluetooth and reduced brightness to about 50%-60% (which was still readable outdoors)
 

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hanurk said:
are there any tweaks or anything you changed to get such good battery life?
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Nope. Just switched to the 9400 GPU.

Looking back at my notes, it looks like I had about 70 minutes of "idle" time interspersed. It was still auto-refreshing a few sites and getting mail every 5 minutes, though.
 
My opinion is still out on this but I can report once calibrated I am getting 3 1/2 hours and I'm down to 8%. The first hour was done with screen at 80%, the rest at 50%. And let me edit that the only program open was Safari and no other disk usage.
 
jecapaga said:
So I topped out at 3 hours and 45 minutes. Not really sure how people are getting 7 and 8 hours. That would be nice.
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The 80% vs 50% can make a noticeable difference, but it doesn't seem like it would explain all of it. The only other thing I can think of is some background process you aren't aware of loading the CPU down. Also, 9600 vs 9400 GPU? Though, again it wouldn't explain hours difference, especially with light load.
 
I was a bit interested in the battery life so I decided to test it out. I was video chatting on iChat, surfing around the internet, and listening to music through iTunes essentially the entire time. On top of that, I had my iPod plugged in for awhile to charge it up (not exactly sure how long it was charging, but it was enough for it to go from drained to full). Screen was just below half brightness and since it was dark I had the keyboard's backlight at 2 boxes. I got around 6 hours of battery life before I got the pop-up warning.
 
ryannn said:
I was a bit interested in the battery life so I decided to test it out. I was video chatting on iChat, surfing around the internet, and listening to music through iTunes essentially the entire time. On top of that, I had my iPod plugged in for awhile to charge it up (not exactly sure how long it was charging, but it was enough for it to go from drained to full). Screen was just below half brightness and since it was dark I had the keyboard's backlight at 2 boxes. I got around 6 hours of battery life before I got the pop-up warning.
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Not bad for including video chat. Even audio chat is a load. I think the low display brightness helps a lot.
 
ubercool said:
I have the uMB and I can tell you that five hours is simply hype. A genius told me to expect not much more than 2:30 and the best I've ever done is 3:30, after repairing permissions, and cranking brightness all the way down and with BT and WiFi off.

I wouldn't expect anyone to ever approach 7 hours and I'm not surprised that typical use will mean a little over four hours. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

its not fair really, the old apple notebooks cough *ibook G3 clamshell* cough used to have enormous battery lives that were akin to what jobs stated at their introduction.

Im not sure when this BSing came about with apple, their estimates used to be either reliable, or underestimates.
 
It seems like you have to use 50% or below brightness to achieve this awesome battery life. I for one simply can't use a glare screen at that brightness. Ambient lighting is also a big deal as in a dark room of course I can use less than 50% brightness. People have to start saying all of their conditions but basically if you use close to full brightness, battery life is going to be 3.5 hours, period.
 
student_trap said:
Im not sure when this BSing came about with apple, their estimates used to be either reliable, or underestimates.
Click to expand...

Apple lists very plainly on their site the testing conditions. Their test mirrors what you average joe would be doing on his computer all day, websurfing with the brightness at half. Thats how they get their estimates.

I still think apple has AMAZING battery life compared to most of the competition. This POS toshiba gets 1.5 hours on POWER SAVER mode and its just a bit shy of one year old. This is the way its been since I got it, and its twin (we picked up two) is exactly the same. Pathetic.


I can't wait for my 13" MBP when I buy it in July/August.:)
 
a) it is critical to calibrate the battery when you receive your new computer.
b) some of you are blowing it by telling the battery it's empty at 11% or 18%.
c) it's far from myth as it's on Apples site; many links available.
d) the mbp should be charged to 100% then used while plugged-in for two hours. Then you unplug from power and do intensive battery drain (YouTube or movie stream). The mbp will warn of reserve battery. Shut the lid and wait 5 hours. Then plug in for at least 6 hours until led is green. At this time gripe and whine if you're under 5 hours.
 
WOW!!! :eek:

It's my first mac and had such high expectations. The battery life runs up and down every friggin time.

WTH apple
 
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