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2011 15" MBP - battery life halved on Lion
- Thread starter Starfox
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What is the condition of your battery? If you are getting literally half the battery life something is wrong. Did spotlight finish its index?
Well nothing may have been happening at the time you looked but helpd and hiutil seem to crank up quite often and heat things up for me (coupled with errant mdworker and mdutil) way after full indexing. This keeps my heat 10ºC hotter than SL and I can only draw a battery drain conclusion with all the extra heat.
While I cannot comment on battery time, as I've had my computer plugged in on and off throughout the day, I wanted to say something about temperatures. I'm on a 13" MBP 2011, which are notoriously hot. The strange thing I've noticed is that it is actually running about 8*C cooler since installing Lion. I used to notice it really crank up while watching Flash videos and while doing other processor-intensive tasks. Within a few seconds, I would be up at 92*C with my fan on full blast. Now, it takes longer to get to that maximum and I'm sitting at closer to 83-85*C. For me, that's an improvement.
Citrix Plugin for Mac
I too have found that my battery life has considerably decreased with my 2009 MBP 13 inch since installing Lion. My activity monitor indicated 50% user activity with nothing obvious causing this. However removing the Citrix plugin has reduced the quiescent user activity to about 5%. I've performed this removal on two computers having the same symptoms and achieving the same results both times. Interesting. If you think this may be the problem, try removing Citrix. To remove it you may have to download the latest version from the website, install it an then remove it. I think I had an older version and it would not remove without me installing the current version first, then removing it.
Link: http://www.citrix.com/English/SS/do...15005&c1=pov2305020&c2=ost12726&c3=sot1864693
I too have found that my battery life has considerably decreased with my 2009 MBP 13 inch since installing Lion. My activity monitor indicated 50% user activity with nothing obvious causing this. However removing the Citrix plugin has reduced the quiescent user activity to about 5%. I've performed this removal on two computers having the same symptoms and achieving the same results both times. Interesting. If you think this may be the problem, try removing Citrix. To remove it you may have to download the latest version from the website, install it an then remove it. I think I had an older version and it would not remove without me installing the current version first, then removing it.
Link: http://www.citrix.com/English/SS/do...15005&c1=pov2305020&c2=ost12726&c3=sot1864693
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AnandTech reports reduced battery life, about 20%, with a 2008 MBP when browsing but about a 5% increase when browsing with a 2011 MBP w/SSD.
This is a good enough reason for me to hold off installing 10.7 on my 2009 MBP who's battery is already somewhat weaker than new. I'm glad I found this out before I went through the hassle of installing it and then having to restore 10.6 to get decent battery life back. Maybe I give it a try on my Mini but with so many issues and complaints I think I'll just burn it to a disk and put it in the drawer for now.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4485/back-to-the-mac-os-x-107-lion-review/24
This is a good enough reason for me to hold off installing 10.7 on my 2009 MBP who's battery is already somewhat weaker than new. I'm glad I found this out before I went through the hassle of installing it and then having to restore 10.6 to get decent battery life back. Maybe I give it a try on my Mini but with so many issues and complaints I think I'll just burn it to a disk and put it in the drawer for now.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4485/back-to-the-mac-os-x-107-lion-review/24
Here's fix that helped me...
This issue has been noted in various threads on Apple's Support Discussions. Someone shared the following advice and it worked for me:
Re: Lion is draining battery twice as fast as snow leopard
Jul 22, 2011 1:39 PM (in response to Tony Corasaniti)
I just called Apple support and they talked me through resetting the power manager, the battery now seems to be fine. I can give you the steps the gentleman over the phone gave me, it might just help.
1. Turn off the computer.
2. Hold down Ctrl+Option+shift
3. While holding down these button, press and hold the power button as well.
4. Hold all buttons for at least ten seconds.
5. power back on the computer.
For me that worked, i don't know how it will work for everyone else but immediately my power estimation jumped up to around 9:30 and 10 hours. Which is two hours more than i started with.
This issue has been noted in various threads on Apple's Support Discussions. Someone shared the following advice and it worked for me:
Re: Lion is draining battery twice as fast as snow leopard
Jul 22, 2011 1:39 PM (in response to Tony Corasaniti)
I just called Apple support and they talked me through resetting the power manager, the battery now seems to be fine. I can give you the steps the gentleman over the phone gave me, it might just help.
1. Turn off the computer.
2. Hold down Ctrl+Option+shift
3. While holding down these button, press and hold the power button as well.
4. Hold all buttons for at least ten seconds.
5. power back on the computer.
For me that worked, i don't know how it will work for everyone else but immediately my power estimation jumped up to around 9:30 and 10 hours. Which is two hours more than i started with.
That is called an SMC reset. It does not help in my case on 2008 MBP. PRAM zap. smc, NVRAM. Nothing is helping.
Best feature of my latest rev mbp 15 was the battery life. It's half what it was according to the indicator.
I need to actually run it and test it to see when it actually dies. The meter might be the problem. I've not ruled that out yet. Either way, it's a big deal if you're running a macbook.
I'm also noticing significantly decreased battery life with my mid-2009 13" MBP. Normally when this happens I'd open Activity Monitor and see an app using an abnormal amount of the CPU, but not in this case. It looks normal--just the battery life is about half what I normally get.
Has anyone actually tried a battery calibration (http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1490) ?
I've noticed that my 2010 15" is reporting decreased battery life (although I'm using the estimator, I haven't actually timed it).
I've noticed that my 2010 15" is reporting decreased battery life (although I'm using the estimator, I haven't actually timed it).
I used my MBP off the charger last night and the battery just tanked on the Intel graphics. 3 hours at best and that was with me doing nothing more than Safari and iTunes. I've reset the SMC as well. Thinking of doing a clean install of Lion to see if this gets resolved or if we just have to wait until 10.7.1. Anybody having the same results on a clean install of Lion?