Battery is pants!! advise?

[taylor200588]

Hi

Yeah its ANOTHER "My battery is rubbish" post

I have a macbook pro 2010 13incher ( ;D ) and the battery is rubbish, after about 2 months of owning it I took it back to apple and they replaced the battery and the screen (I had wifi problems too). But its never been what I expected. On the box it says "10 hours" ..... I would be happy for 6 or even 8 but all I'm getting is about 3 or 4!

Most days I use it for basic surfing and iTunes crap, but other days I use it for heavy 3D modeling and photoshop (I'm a computer arts student) and I KNOW that this will eat into my battery. But when its normal surfing and stuff I would just expect more!

I do the whole calibrating thing at least once a week! On my iStats pro it says

Health 88%
Cycles 199

So 1. Am I just expecting too much from such a little machine?? and 2. Have you's got any tips to help me save my battery

TAH!!!

Craig

 

[simsaladimbamba]

______________________________________________________
This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:
Apple Notebook Battery FAQ by GGJstudios
______________________________________________________​

Also have a look at Activity Monitor (Applications / Utilities /) and select All Processes and sort by CPU to see what the culprit may be.

image below uses sorting by CPU as an example

 

[Blue Sun]

Use Chrome with the Flashblock extension by Josorek.

Turn bluetooth off.

And try using MRoogle to search the forums.

 

[gnasher729]

My advice:

1. Don't get obsessive with "calibrating". Calibrating doesn't improve battery life, it only improves how accurate the display is. On the other hand, every calibration takes one charge out of your battery life. Looks like about 40 of your 199 charges were wasted on pointless calibrating.

2. Keep your MBP plugged in when you can. There's no point in using the battery if you don't have to.

3. Turn off Flash. Flash is the #1 battery life killer. There's a reason why there is no Flash on iPhone and iPad, and that is the reason.

4. Reduce screen brightness. The screen is the #1 battery eater when your MBP isn't doing much.

5. If it isn't obvious, charging iPods, iPads, iPhones etc. from a MBP running on battery will greatly reduce how long a battery charge lasts. It's no problem if the MBP is plugged in.

6. As others said, use Activity Monitor to find what is using the CPU. If something seems to use more CPU then it should, you know what to fix.

 

[bigjobby]

My advice:
2. Keep your MBP plugged in when you can. There's no point in using the battery if you don't have to.

I'd agree with all your points but just wanted to elaborate on the above. Personally, I wouldn't leave my MBP plugged in if I wasn't using it and also, exercising the battery is not a bad thing either but at the same time, I wouldn't let it drain completely (except during calibration).

There are a lot of good advise in the link of post #2 and also in the user manual.

 

[snaky69]

I'd agree with all your points but just wanted to elaborate on the above. Personally, I wouldn't leave my MBP plugged in if I wasn't using it and also, exercising the battery is not a bad thing either but at the same time, I wouldn't let it drain completely (except during calibration).

There are a lot of good advise in the link of post #2 and also in the user manual.

I've had my MBP for over 3 years now, and whenever it's home and not being used, it's constantly plugged in, I use it 3-4 days a week at university and sometimes at the GF's for couch surfing and whatnot, I'm at 181 cycles at 75% battery health, not bad for a 3 year old laptop, it still lasts me 2.5 to 3 hours with light usage. Keeping in plugged in ALL the time is bad, but MOST of the time, it isn't.

 

[bigjobby]

I've had my MBP for over 3 years now, and whenever it's home and not being used, it's constantly plugged in, I use it 3-4 days a week at university and sometimes at the GF's for couch surfing and whatnot, I'm at 181 cycles at 75% battery health, not bad for a 3 year old laptop, it still lasts me 2.5 to 3 hours with light usage. Keeping in plugged in ALL the time is bad, but MOST of the time, it isn't.

I'm already above 150 cycles (health in high 90s) and I've had this unit <12months! I do tend to use my MBP on battery quite frequently but I guess this does keep those electrons moving and well exercised.

Eventhough your health is registering at 75%, at least this figure can easily be made to increase given the right conditions (so I read somewhere).

 

[Looon]

Are your keys lit up
is bluetooth on
is the screen at full brightness
are you running a thousand programs
watching a movie

etc