Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Aluminum MAcbook Battery SUCKS!!!!

anish3232 said:
Battery life seems to be a lot better after calibration. I am at 70% and the meter says 3 Hours 30 mins. Thats at least 30% better then the reading I got yesterday.

EDIT

For some reason the meter is giving a bad reading. Now I am at 66% and is giving a 2 Hour 28 Mins. reading. Not sure what is up with this battery. Maybe a bad battery.
Click to expand...

There is nothing wrong with your meter. Do this: unplug your computer, open up two or three different applications, turn your screen on full blast, and let them run... after about 5 minutes, see what your battery time is, and then turn your brightness down to under 50%, close down two of those applications, and you will DEFINITELY see the battery time increase.
With these batteries, the more applications you have open, the less time you have on the battery. As you close applications, the amount of CHARGE left in the battery does NOT change, but the time you have left to run on that charge changes!
I hope i didn't make this VERY complicated and wordy... :confused: :confused:
 
ubercool said:
I have never even gotten close to five hours, four is more like it and that is with everything (BT, Wi-Fi, screen dimmed all the way, keyboard BL turned off) off or down. It appears that my battery is actually degrading, because with full brightness I get about 2 hours of battery life, with everything turned off, about 3 hours.

I have a very hard time believing all you posters with five hours plus. For one, it's simply impossible to get the same battery life on the new MB as the original one as it has *less* rated capacity: 45-Wh battery vs. original MacBooks 55-Wh. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

actually this isnt true at all...well, at least according to apple...since most of the components are actually more power efficient, they use less power, even with the lower rated battery, so thats why you can supposedly still get the 5 hour claim

as for me, i actually get close to 6 hours with a couple tabs open in safari, brightness about half way...i guess i take good care of my battery... :D
 
nishishei said:
t's like a Rolex and a Seiko, both have high consumer satisfaction, but if we are talking specifically about timing accuracy, a typical Seiko beats every single Rolex hands down. People wear Rolexes for other reasons not related to absolute accuracy.
Click to expand...

What are you talking about? Sieko's are utter junk and should never be compared to Rolex's, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when it comes to watches and I suggest you never make that analogy again.
 
Gen said:
What are you talking about? Sieko's are utter junk and should never be compared to Rolex's, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when it comes to watches and I suggest you never make that analogy again.
Click to expand...

What? Oh yes right, let's stay on topic.

Anyway; my battery is just perfect, meets the 5 hour claim easily with brightness lowered and just some browsing / music playback.
 
I timed it. 5 hours and 13 minutes with screen set one 25% brightness and keyboard turned off. I had a couple tab opens in Firefox. BT turned off, connected to internet through 802.11N. I guess i must just have a crazy good batter or something:rolleyes::cool::rolleyes::cool: I compulsively full cycle my battery. I got my computer on the 20th of October and i am showing 50 charge cycles with a max capacity of 4393mAh. My old 12 powerbook G4 had something like 2000 charges on it and still held a 85% charge because I am so compulsive about always full cycling it.
 
I am also somewhat OCD when it comes to charge/drain cycles. So far, a full charge gets me about 3:45 of run time ( claims the toolbar, not my watch )

I think I'm going to have to lower the screen brightness even more, as well as the lighted keys. For all of you 4-5 hour champs out there, do you have your "adjust to ambient light" set? Any tips aside from BT, Wifi, screen brightness to help the life of the battery? Does time machine affect the battery life?
 
macalacka said:
I am also somewhat OCD when it comes to charge/drain cycles. So far, a full charge gets me about 3:45 of run time ( claims the toolbar, not my watch )

I think I'm going to have to lower the screen brightness even more, as well as the lighted keys. For all of you 4-5 hour champs out there, do you have your "adjust to ambient light" set? Any tips aside from BT, Wifi, screen brightness to help the life of the battery? Does time machine affect the battery life?
Click to expand...

i have the adjust to ambient light setting on...but i mean, it really just depends on what you are doing...i can get actually almost 6 hours with the brightness at 25%, keys at half, wifi on with a few tabs in firefox, BT off. if i have itunes playing it cuts it down to about 5.25 hours...

and i would think that time machine does affect battery, at least when its running...so you might want to look into that.
 
For those getting 5+ hours out of the battery

Does the battery meter ever read (5:XX) remaining?

Just unpluged my computer, Firefox is the only app running, 25% brightness, Bluetooth off and the meter reads (4:05)

No where near 5 hours.
 
Just unplugged, bluetooth off, wifi off, firefox open with 2 tabs, and brightness at 25%:
Meter is reading 6 hours 30 minutes...
Whether or not i'll actually get 6.5 hours, I'm not sure.
 
sutherlandan said:
Just unplugged, bluetooth off, wifi off, firefox open with 2 tabs, and brightness at 25%:
Meter is reading 6 hours 30 minutes...
Whether or not i'll actually get 6.5 hours, I'm not sure.
Click to expand...

lol what im wondering is why you have wifi off but you have firefox open with two tabs... :p

and to the person who asked if the reading is ever above 5 hours...for me yes...when i just unplug, it shows around 5:40, and i have actually been getting around that. right now my battery is at 75% 4 Hours left, brightness at half, wifi on, two tabs open in firefox.
 
anish3232 said:
My battery must be a bad one then. I can not get my reading past 4 hours and some change. However Coconut battery says its in good health.
Click to expand...

Take it to the Genius Bar for a replacement in that case. I find it sad these MacBooks use a worse battery than the old ones, they simply use less power resulting in the same times. We could be getting 6-7 hours out of these machines.
 
MysticMage said:
Take it to the Genius Bar for a replacement in that case. I find it sad these MacBooks use a worse battery than the old ones, they simply use less power resulting in the same times. We could be getting 6-7 hours out of these machines.
Click to expand...

yeah i find that stupid too...and the battery is overall bigger i think too...might be thinner, but whatever, it should have the same power rating as the older ones...
 
Flash in the pan

One thing that can really eat up battery life is Flash. Since I turned Flash off, I get at least an extra hour of battery life.

If I'm running Firefox in the background with Flash on, Firefox can use about 80% of a processor. With Flash off on the same websites, it uses about 0.1 % of a processor. That makes a big difference in battery life.

From what I can tell, the new MacBooks have better processor power management and a smaller capacity battery. These changes probably break even normally, but when the processor is at high use, it's going to eat away at the smaller battery faster.
 
It has been 48 hours since I got my MacBook and it has gone through four battery cycles already. The battery is pretty bad in my opinion, but I think I will see how far it can go throughout the next week.

If the problems persists then I will surely call a Genius to get it fixed. In the mean time, I downloaded coconutBattery and it seems to be a decent program to use.

Ya, this is my first Mac as well as my first laptop so I will be needing help from the community :)
 
Found the problem, my desktop background was set to change every 10 seconds or so. This was killing battery due to the graphics card working harder. Now I am happy with the battery life. I am at 93% with (5:59) left. What a difference.
 
Just unplugged my computer from the charger and it said I had 7:20 of battery life! It stayed like that for about one minute and now it says I have 6:01 of battery left... not too bad. I doubt it will actually last that long though. The battery only has 10 cycles too. System Profiler says that full charge capacity is 4235mAh, is that good? This is with Safari and Mail open, keyboard backlight off, and the screen at 2 clicks from being all the way dim.
 
I have had and still have a lot of laptops. Just got an aluminum macbook for my everyday computer and have no issues with battery life. The only time its low is when I'm playing half life 2 in windows... needless to say I expected it to be low during those times and it still lasts over an hour. In everyday use I'm getting 3.5 to 4 hours.
 
i can honestly say i have the same problem as original poster..with my black 2.4 macbook at half brightness i got 4 hours easy. with my new aluminum 2.4 at miminum brightness on screen and keys im lucky to get 3 hours...some people get 5 hours?? holy cow im jealous maybe my battery is defective i could never get that simply by browsing only
 
Mine works fine. It gave me up to 5 hours of battery life when I was doing the calibration on my MB when I first got it...and it works even fine as of right now..:D
 
DeusInvictus7 said:
lol what im wondering is why you have wifi off but you have firefox open with two tabs... :p

and to the person who asked if the reading is ever above 5 hours...for me yes...when i just unplug, it shows around 5:40, and i have actually been getting around that. right now my battery is at 75% 4 Hours left, brightness at half, wifi on, two tabs open in firefox.
Click to expand...

Ethernet still exists... no? ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back