Battery is Pathetic

[NotsQuicksilver]

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New 2011 13 inch i7 battery lasts less than 2 hours running apps like MS word. My freakin 8 yr old ibook lasts longer playing halo which its specs say it should not even be capable of running. Is this normal for MBPs? Should I take it in?

 

[miles01110]

You're probably running something in the background; my guess is Spotlight indexing.

 

[GGJstudios]

Your battery life is dependent on many factors, including screen brightness, WiFi, bluetooth, apps/widgets/processes running, etc. This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:

Apple Notebook Battery FAQ​

 

[tech324]

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New 2011 13 inch i7 battery lasts less than 2 hours running apps like MS word. My freakin 8 yr old ibook lasts longer playing halo which its specs say it should not even be capable of running. Is this normal for MBPs? Should I take it in?

Yeah that doesn't seem right. I have the 13 inch MBP (i5 not i7) and I get almost 7 hours out of it with a web browser, textpad, email, and terminals running. I usually keep my screen brightness really low too though. Check your processes and see if something is using a lot of CPU.

 

[Al Coholic]

No. It's not normal. Even with that overpriced i7 blast furnace you bought.

Compared to some here, you've got a legitimate reason to return it IMO. After all, It's not like you're whining about a microscopic smudge on the bottom left corner or you were missing your one of your Apple stickers.

 

[NotsQuicksilver]

I have had the bluetooth and airport card turned off and disabled since I bought it. I always use the lowest brightness and disable the backlit keys. Oh and spotlight has been finnished with indexing since the day I got it. I just turned of hyper-threading today to see if it helps.

 

[bozz2006]

I had no idea you could even turn off hyper threading. You should be able to get over two hours out of your computer with brightness all the way up, airport on, with heavy cpu usage. Something's not right. Call Apple.

 

[sdneidich]

I have had the bluetooth and airport card turned off and disabled since I bought it. I always use the lowest brightness and disable the backlit keys. Oh and spotlight has been finnished with indexing since the day I got it. I just turned of hyper-threading today to see if it helps.

Check application manager, and download istat pro and see if there is something in the background going thats sucking CPU. Also, iStat will tell you your battery's health.

That is pretty f*ing pathetic battery life. My 2011 MBP i7 8 GB ram, 128 SSD gets upwards of 6 hours. And I am usually running a lot of apps.

 

[Ceebee1980]

What version of Word?
I posted somewhere that I noticed something weird with Rosetta. I found that if I ran MSWord 2004, GFXCardStatus showed that the ATI Radeon video card would run for no reason, EVEN AFTER I quit MSWord.
So I checked out ActivityMonitor, and noticed that some little Rosetta/MS auto-updater script stays running, hidden.
Quit that out, and if it annoys you, go use NeoOffice lol

 

[NotsQuicksilver]

Im running Open Office. I was just saying I was running applications like word or just sitting at the desktop. To disable hyper-threading you need the CPU-preference pane included with X-code tools.

 

[ratzzo]

That doesn't seem quite right. All of the tests to the new MBPs have shown how the 13" wins in the battery field. I highly doubt that the issue lies within hyperthreading, perhaps it's the actual battery that's flawed. Try checking it out with CoconutBattery.



Also, I would have suggested calibrating the battery but that just helps to perform more accurate battery readings... :/

 

[NickZac]

This is probably not software related given how quickly it drains, and you will likely need to have the battery replaced.

 

[8CoreWhore]

Most likely a defective battery. It happens. They'll replace it.

 

[vsighi]

"New 2011 13 inch i7 battery lasts less than 2 hours " wow and I was trying to upgrade to 2011 Macbook Pro ...I think I will keep my 2010 for 7-8 hour battery.

 

[brentsg]

Not normal, my 2011 is fine.

 

[tylerpenn]

I suspect I may have the same battery issue on my 2011 2.2 i7 mbpro.

I have Coconut battery installed but how will I be able to tell if I have a defective battery with that program?

 

[DarwinOSX]

"New 2011 13 inch i7 battery lasts less than 2 hours " wow and I was trying to upgrade to 2011 Macbook Pro ...I think I will keep my 2010 for 7-8 hour battery.

Yeah because all 2011 17" MBP's have 2 hour battery life.

 

[DarwinOSX]

No. It's not normal. Even with that overpriced i7 blast furnace you bought.

Check pricing on 17" laptops of equivalent quality. Like HP W series. Also realize that the 17" actually runs cooler because it has more space for heat dissipation.

 

[mark28]

I suspect I may have the same battery issue on my 2011 2.2 i7 mbpro.

I have Coconut battery installed but how will I be able to tell if I have a defective battery with that program?

If you have the 15" 2011 model, I suspect that the battery capacity should be 6900. ( the 2010 15" model has 6900 and I don't think the battery was changed with this update ).

If it's something like 5000, something is wrong. What does iStat Pro say about battery health?

Also do a calibration and see if it fixes it if you haven't done it already

 

[NotsQuicksilver]

I’m at about 1% right now. Going to calibrate it soon. I disabled dashboard with an app called Onyx. I've been doing it for years with no problems; however somehow disabling dashboard trashed my battery life. As soon as I enabled dashboard my battery life jumped to 5 hours.

 

[GGJstudios]

I’m at about 1% right now. Going to calibrate it soon. I disabled dashboard with an app called Onyx. I've been doing it for years with no problems; however somehow disabling dashboard trashed my battery life. As soon as I enabled dashboard my battery life jumped to 5 hours.

It's most likely that Dashboard wasn't the problem, but rather a specific widget. It is not uncommon for a poorly-designed widget to end up with a runaway process that consumes resources and battery life. You might try re-enabling Dashboard and only add basic widgets, one at a time, monitoring system resources as you add them.

 

[thermodynamic]

Check pricing on 17" laptops of equivalent quality. Like HP W series. Also realize that the 17" actually runs cooler because it has more space for heat dissipation.

I've seen the circuit boards for both; both direct air out of the rear of the case. The 17" case is larger but the tightness of the chips surely couldn't make the extra space that much cooler?

http://static.arstechnica.com/hardware/15_17_macbookpro_logicboard_ifixit.png

 

[legreve]

Just wanted to add (or confirm) a tip... the application "gfxCardStatus" is very very useful.

It enables you to easily switch between the dedicated and the integrated graphics card.
I'd been bugging over the 4 hours I get from normal usage, but then found some threads talking about this program.

I installed it and after re measurement it boosted the battery life from 4 hours to 7.5 hours :O this is ofcourse during normal usage like surfing, using a simple program etc. But still, this really surprised me and means a lot since I use my mbp during my daily transportation.
With a little more usage like downloading and maybe some youtube, I'm still getting more than 5 hours.

So check it out and judge for yourself. I say it's worth it.