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55% battery goes to 0% in 1 hour - brand new MBP 13.3

D

djrobsd

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 2, 2008
825
25
So, I turned the computer on from sleep tonight, and saw it had 55% remaining on the battery. I know that the second half of the battery drain is usually faster then the first, but surely on a brand new computer, it wouldn't drain that quickly? Or would it?

All I was doing was watching Brothers & Sisters on ABC's web site... So, yes, I was using the wi-fi. I had screen brightness dimmed to about 50%, and I turned the backlight off on the keyboard... So is 1 hour normal?

I noticed the fan was running the whole time. I didn't realize watching a video online would cause the processor to heat up so much!!

I checked the CPU utilization, and definitely Safari was cranking it up there...

So, what caused the drain? Is it the heavy CPU utilization which in turn caused the fans to kick in? How can I stream video online without causing my CPU to have a heart attack?
 
BTW, I should note on my PC running XP Pro, Firefox, Firefox.exe is 25% CPU utilized in normal size window, 40% in full screen mode, this being on a Core 2 Duo 6600 processor. ;)
 
Just checked that website and it seems to be completely overwhelmed with flash commercials, so there's your problem. Stop visiting bad webpages.
 
melman101 said:
Check out Google Chrome. Seems to handle flash real well.
Click to expand...

I'm trying to install the beta version for Mac and it just isn't installing. I clicked on "Click here if you had trouble downloading" and now it's just a neverending page loading. How'd you get yours installed? :confused:
 
Flash on Safari rapes your CPU as it loads a plug in.

Google Chrome is much better, no burnt thighs now.
 
So you'd get 2 hours on a full battery, and you're running Windows? Sounds normal to me. Not that Windows is bad or anything, but it doesn't have OS X's power management.
 
Ugh... Yeah so this is the age old Adobe Vs Apple problem. Flash works perfect on Windows... Well maybe not perfect, but pretty close. Maybe I should boot into Windows 7 instead of OSX when watching TV on my mac. :) Wouldn't that be ironic if the battery lasted longer with Windows inferior power management? ;)

I'll try the Google Chrome too. And to the person who said "Don't visit these type of web sites", what kind of idiot are you anyway? That's like telling someone "don't drive to work, walk" after they just bought a brand new car. Almost every web site uses Flash now, there is no way around it.... Especially if I want to watch ABC. Sure, I could buy the episodes in itunes, but why pay for what you can get for free?!

Another workaround would be for me to use Bittorrent or Rapidshare and download the xvid files and play them with VLC. I'm sure that wouldn't eat my battery or my CPU, in fact I know it doesn't since I watch other types of videos with that all the time. LOL

BTW, I don't know why Adobe and Apple can't just play nice. Neither of them is going away any time soon, so they better just suck it up and play nice (and also please Apple let Adobe work on the iphone too!!)..... Flash is working on other mobile platforms.

Oh wait we're talking about Macbook Pro here, sorry!
 
djrobsd said:
And to the person who said "Don't visit these type of web sites", what kind of idiot are you anyway? That's like telling someone "don't drive to work, walk" after they just bought a brand new car. Almost every web site uses Flash now, there is no way around it.... Especially if I want to watch ABC. Sure, I could buy the episodes in itunes, but why pay for what you can get for free?!
Click to expand...

Actually that comparison is incorrect. A more correct comparison would be you bought a car run it on ethanol, but it isn't working properly, so instead you should fill it up with gasoline.

There are alternitives. And the ABC site is very bad, too many flash things. Sure flash are on most pages, but not as much as ABC.
 
djrobsd said:
Ugh... Yeah so this is the age old Adobe Vs Apple problem. Flash works perfect on Windows... Well maybe not perfect, but pretty close. Maybe I should boot into Windows 7 instead of OSX when watching TV on my mac. :) Wouldn't that be ironic if the battery lasted longer with Windows inferior power management? ;)
Click to expand...

Flash is a resource hog, whether you are using Windows or Mac OS X.

If you booted into Windows 7 and did the same thing, I doubt you'd see any significant battery improvements when watching Flash based content.

Flash is horrific.. wish everyone would switch to HTML5, especially YouTube.
 
...

get flash 10.1 it will help decrease cpu utilization somewhat. Also if you haven't calibrated your battery you may want to do that as well
 
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