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Aluminum MAcbook Battery SUCKS!!!!

Chundles said:
My 2.4GHz one is about to run out after 4.5 hours running Safari, iTunes, Mail, NetNewsWire and I've played a couple of 720p TV Shows and watched a fair bit of YouTube. Display at full brightness, volume at max.

I'm calibrating it right now - seems to be the same as my BlackBook but watching the HD shows put much less of a strain on the system on this machine than the old one.

Just waiting for it to turn off so I can plug it in and get the battery back to full.

So far I've been seeing near-enough results to the 5hr claimed life.
Click to expand...

Same mode as you right now - unplugged, screen brightness full, volume not at max, and in fact, far, far less GPU-intensive usage with mostly Entourage and Firefox, plus a pretty low-impact VPN tunnel.

And it's down to 39% after one and a half hours. And I know all my batteries have the same runtime.

I call fer-laaaaming, humongous, BS.
 
Screen brightness full. Wireless on.
Entourage (fully synced prior to unplugging), Firefox, aforementioned low-impact VPN tunnel. One trailer (Firefox), one 5-minute movie (Firefox), five Youtube videos (Firefox). System unused but screen left on for approximately 45 minutes total of this runtime test. Rest of the time spent in Firefox (obviously reading pages so pausing) or Entourage (email composition, calendar jig, etc). Pretty much in fact what I'd do on a laptop if I wasn't doing a lot, but just with the addition of full screen brightness.

Unplugged at 99% charge (and we know that's pretty typical, right?): 12:04
Forced hibernation: 14:54.

As I said, fer-laaaming. What you have here is pretty standard runtime for a low-end 13-inch-class machine, even a number with discrete GPU's which makes it all the more unexceptional. This concept of making up runtime to meet or exceed that of the manufacturer's claim that I see pretty much exclusively on Apple forums is pretty new to me. Is this some sort of unwritten part of devotional duties?
 
Could someone quickly clear something up for me please?

I think we're all agreed (and according to Apple) that the best way to keep the battery in tip top condition is to exercise it for a couple of hours a day. As long as you do this then there's no problem with running it off mains most of the time.

My question is this. I just put my MBP to sleep when not using it, so overnight it loses about 10% charge or about 20% a day if I don't use it until I get in from work. Is this enough daily exercise for the battery or should the battery drop to something more like 50% before being recharged?

Just want to make sure my battery doesn't end up like my Dell, which only has about an hour max now at full charge!!

Thanks in advance.
 
Sorry if i'm a bit out of topic..but as i was checking the battery using coconut, it shows tht my MB is 124 months old! How's tht possible? I've just bought it last week.. can anyone please explain..
 

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rayz031 said:
Sorry if i'm a bit out of topic..but as i was checking the battery using coconut, it shows tht my MB is 124 months old! How's tht possible? I've just bought it last week.. can anyone please explain..
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Don't worry, mine says that too. I've heard it's just a bug with Cocunut Battery and Leopard. I just bought mine like 2 weeks ago and it has 5 cycles on battery and says it's 124 months old. Use istatpro instead of cocunut battery.
 
labyrinth23 said:
Don't worry, mine says that too. I've heard it's just a bug with Cocunut Battery and Leopard. I just bought mine like 2 weeks ago and it has 5 cycles on battery and says it's 124 months old. Use istatpro instead of cocunut battery.
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Thanks a lot for tht!.. feeling better now..
 
ive had my aluminum macbook since last december and my battery still lasts a good 2 hours with itunes/cs3/lr2 running. that is way better battery life than what i got out of my MBP 2.16 which lasted me urgh... less than an hour under the same conditions.
 
Which is the best battery test to use? Coconut? Is there an OSX utility somewhere?
 
riceboidavid said:
My battery sucks! I was wondering if I should take it in?

Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 2646
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4054
Health Information:
Cycle count: 73
Condition: Good
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1192
Voltage (mV): 11578

73 Cycles in 4 months...O Lordy
Click to expand...


Is my Battery alright still?
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 313
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4212
Health Information:
Cycle count: 24
 
Prolong the Battery

Would it be alright to completely charge you Macbook to 100 percent then use it till it is almost empty then charge it back up?
 
Does these 2 screenshots look OK?

Any ideas on how i get the amperage down so the battery will last longer?

Just firefox running with wifi - battery reckons there is about 3:05 left.


 
Monitoring the number of battery cycles is a good way to drive yourself nuts. I stopped looking at mine because I was filled with the fear that every time I saw the number of cycles go up I was seeing harm be done to my MacBook. Now, I just ignore it and figure I'll get some good years out of it. My blood pressure is down and the vein in my forehead has stopped throbbing.
 
Has anyone tried this....

After buying a new MacBook 2.4g w 4Gb RAM last week and trying it out this weekend, I'm on 2 charge cycles and noticed that the mac only went for about 2 hours tops on a single charge. Pretty dismal. I found this forum and read with interest the various comparisons - favourable and unfavourable. I tweaked a few settings on the power saver panel to no avail - the meter still estimated under 2 hours right after fully charging.

After a calibration, at full charge my battery meter estimated 1 hour 57. Dimming the screen only helped by about 15 mins at 50%. Then I tried something. I turned off all the settings from the power save, ie turn off hard disk - no, dim display - no, ambient light adjust - no. Sleep time set to never, display off in 1 hour. Screen brightness set to max, Wifi and Bluetooth on. Yes, on.

Fire up Safari, surf a few pages, open a doc in OpenOffice, start up VirtualBox and run a Windows session inside a virtual machine. CPU load now around 15% consistently. Battery meter goes to over 5 hours - that's more like it! So, is it going to actually last that long?

This was at 3pm today. I went out for a few hours and the mac was still estimating 58 minutes when I got back. The battery eventually ran out after well over 5 hours of (admittedly unattended) use!! I know I wasn't at the keyboard but this was at least using wifi power and bluetooth and the virtual session of windows would ensure the CPU was always awake.

It's on charge again now and I intend to try a more scientific test with screenshots etc to prove the point but I do suspect that some of the power save options seem only to make the battery life worse rather than better.

Has anyone else tried the run-down test?
 
Battery time display is not contact :)

Hi,

With only one safari browser on and adium on without itunes or whatsoever, my macbook uni 2.4ghz lasted only 4hrs with all the power saving tips done.

moreover, anyone knows whats going on? My battery time indictor deviates from 5hr - 4hr to 2hr to 3hr and kept going up and down inconsistently... And despite this I still managed to get 4hrs.

its only 5days old with Full Charge Capacity - 4277 and Cycle Count -7
 
My battery has dropped after 4 -5 months

My 13" Macbook 2.0 is showing 44% max charge on Cocoanut and 57% on istatpro after just 4-5 months. Disconnected it says 2:59 from full charge (only 57% capacity) and seems to last well under 3 hours. That's very poor.

Rather than Apple say we should go through a discharge cycle, why don't they provide a program like the old battery recondition one? That had you plug the charger in and kick the program off when you went to bed and it drained the battery then trickle charged it. I don't see why it should be the user's responsibility to know how to treat the battery.

I had 2 Macbook Pros before this, a Core 1 Duo and a Santa Rosa and the same with them. Had to replace the battery after 2 years and 1 year respectively. Yet my 12 year old Powerbook 3100 still goes for 2:30 on its battery. Is this related to Intel chips?

Great computers, but battery life and longevity used to be an Apple plus - not any more in my experience.

SD
 
Battery Capacity

When ever I drain the battery to cycle it the capacity goes down. Say I am at 100% my capacity is at 4217. When I am at 50% the capacity drops down to 4198. Am I doing something wrong? I charge the battery to 100% then use it until about 8 percent. Then fully charge it. Is this the correct way to handle the battery?
 
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 2199
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4218
Health Information:
Cycle count: 25
Condition: Good
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -784
Voltage (mV): 11388
l
Should I take my Macbook into the Apple store? Is my battery still okay?
 
Here is my current status.

How can I prolong my Battery Capacity?
 

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