Battery/Heat issues 15" MBP 8 months old

[sfyyaz]

Hi,

New to the forums - I've had this MBP for just over 8 months now, I'd intially purchased one in november, but the audio out used to give a crackle sound so they replaced the laptop.
Moving on to the point - in the last week or so, I've noticed the MBP suddenly seems to get very hot and the fans turn on and thus suddenly becomes very noisy. I was using it on the bed so could appreciate that I may have been blocking the vents, but I've had it on a stand the past couple of days and it still seems to do it for no particular reason. The charger usually always gets ridiculously hot, but the MBP used to stay relatively cool, now the MBP gets hot independently of whether its being charged or not.
Moreover, my battery life has gone from what used to last 4 hours, to around 2.25 .
Cocunut battery gave the following stats:
Current Battery capacity: 4483mAh
Load Cycles: 222
Age: 8 months

I have no idea as to if the stats are good or bad etc, but I'd really appreciate some help on this and if it might be worth giving Apple a call!

Thanks!

 

[geoffreak]

Install iStat to read the temperatures and install Coconut Battery for battery health information.

 

[celticpride678]

What applications are you running? To control fan speeds, install smcFanControl or Fan Control for Mac.


For battery life, it all depends on what you are running and your battery health. Have you tried to calibrate your battery. Check Apple Support on how to do this.

EDIT: Use the link geoffreak provided for Battery Calibration

 

[geoffreak]

Battery Calibration

 

[J the Ninja]

Have you checked to see if some process is eating a lot of CPU power? That could produce all the symptoms you've described.

Your battery capacity at 4483 is fine, btw, assuming this is one of the Late 2008 (Rev A unibody) models. In fact, considering your cycle count, it's pretty dang good.

 

[sfyyaz]

Wow, thanks for the rapid responses. It is indeed what I think is a RevA model.

Ok, so I'm running 'Mail' and 'Safari' right now, and the laptop is charging, these are the temperatures from istat:
HD 35 C
CPU A 75
GPU 60
GPU Heatsink 53
Enclosure Bottom 33
Memory Controller 57
Northbridge 1 64
All in degrees C

In reference to applications that I might have been running, the only thing I can think of would be Transmission - normally I'd be running say Mail, Safari, and Word. Would this be a fair explanation?

I was curious as to if the two, heat and shortened battery life were linked at all? Like the increased heat is compromising the battery?

Also, with regards to the battery stats, I understand that the cycle count is high, and although this seems like a stupid question, how am I supposed to keep the count lower? Any advice/suggestions would be appreciated!
I've read various discussions on maintaining the battery, and it seems that I cannot remove the battery without throttling performance, and so when I try and use mains, I make a point to use the battery here and there.

Also, I will run the calibration over the next couple of days and report back the effects. Thanks for everyone's help!