Battery and OSX update question

[Jaredistheman]

I bought my black macbook off of ebay about a year ago and so far have been pleased with, however a few months after i got it i realized the battery wouldn't last but about 15 to 30 minutes. Now i wasn't to concerned cause i always kept it plugged in. But as i started college i started needing it on campus and not always having a place to plug into and it was essentially unusable. So i bought a brand new battery and have been using it for a couple days. When i got it, i charged it all the way up, let it drain all the way down, then charged it back up full and left it on the charger for well over 2 hours (as that's what apple suggests). But still, my battery seems to be draining VERY quickly. Such as now. I charged it up full before i left for school this morning. In less than 20 minutes on very light web browsing and listening to music, i'm down to 86%. And the other annoying this is i have the time instead of the battery percentage, and the time is bouncing all over the place. It'll start out around 3:15 or so, then 4:05, then 1:45, then 2:30 all in about 2 or 3 minutes.

So i'm wondering is there something wrong with my computer? Some setting that needs to be tweaked? Bluetooth is off, wifi on. I'm only running firefox and itunes. I'm also running cee pee you, little snitch, and temperature monitor in the background, however i severely doubt programs as light at those would really affect battery life that much.

My second question is completely different. Because my macbook is a little older, i'm still running tiger. I want to put on snow leopard, but i'm wondering, will any of my programs be affected? Basically will have to reinstall any of them? I'll just say, without sounding sinister, i don't want to have to reinstall any programs. haha

thanks for any help guys!

 

[spinnerlys]

1. Battery time is almost always presented according to the current use of CPU. It is not entirely accurate.

Example: My battery indicator says I have 7:00 hours left right now, due to light browsing. If I open Call Of Duty 17 - Ancient Warfare 3 I use more CPU and if I could see my battery indicator, it would tell me that I have 1:08 hour left right now. If I play for 50 minutes and browse again, I might see the battery indicator saying 2:01 hours left.

2. Some software titles you have might not be Snow Leopard compatible, you have to check first, but an update process involving Mac OS X normally updates your Mac, it does not erase it, so no need to install most of your stuff again.

 

[Jaredistheman]

Thanks for that man, that explanation really makes sense. I still find that i'm getting around 2, maybe 2 and a half hours battery life max though. Could it really be cee pee you, temp monitor, and little snitch?

 

[spinnerlys]

...
Could it really be cee pee you, temp monitor, and little snitch?

What?

The CPU uses power to calculate, the more calculation per seconds (1/s = Hz) it has to perform, the more power is needed to be either drawn from the power supply or the battery. The more power the CPU needs the hotter it gets, thus the temperature rises.

Little Snitch is just some kind of advanced firewall, it needs CPU, but so does every other process. Look into Activity Monitor and see what process hog up the CPU. Don't forget to select "Show All Processes".

Also have a look at > About This Mac > More Info... > Hardware > Power > Battery Cycle Count and Full Charge Capacity. For the BlackBook it should be around 4-5000 mAh.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1519

 

[Jaredistheman]

What i meant was i'm using the program "cee pee you" to monitor cpu usage, and i was thinking maybe those processes running in the background might really hurt battery life but after checking the activity monitor it doesn't seem like their using hardly anything. My amperage or whatever is around 5300.

Is true? /\ can a battery really not be compatible with a certain operating system?