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Battery life 7 hrs...NOT!

markus843 said:
Oh god..... :confused::confused::confused: I was almost certain it was MEANT for MBP's

Well.. I'm embarrassed
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That's ok mate, there's a lot of information anyway. ;)

Whatever GGJstudios says about Macbook's batteries is right, he developed the whole thing for Apple, never forget that. haha :p
 
GGJstudios said:
Read the instructions in that link, then read what you posted. They are not the same at all. And they don't apply to newer Macs with built-in batteries.
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nanolife already explained to me haha, and did you really design the batteries?
 
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I've had 45 minutes of battery life before and I've also had 9 hours on the same machine (15" MBP).

It very much depends what you are doing.

Audio consumes power. Wifi consumes power (more transfer = more power). 3d consumes LOTS of power (my 45 minutes eta was when running a game, to see just how bad the power draw was).

Streaming video over wifi and playing it, 4 hrs is in the ballpark.
 
Sorry if I missed this tip in the thread but have you checked if you're running on the discrete GPU? The 3-4hours is a time you mostly get if the Nvidia GPU is activated a lot. If you just go by the Intel GPU you should get 7+ hours.

Try to install gfxCardStatus and take a look if you often use the Nvidia GPU. If so, locate the process (displayed it in the menu under "Dependencies") and think try to avoid this process/programm to maximize battery life.

If this is not the case, the problem should lie elsewhere.
 
Assimilated said:
Something has gone seriously wrong with your upgrade, then, as everyone else (me included) is seeing significantly increased battery-life.
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Actually there is a bunch of people who have the same problem as me from what I read in previous posts about 10.8.2 .
 
zipur said:
I am getting 4 hours battery life 100% -- 1% constantly. I called the G-folks and they walked me through the SMC reset but it did not help. They then said that 4 hours is normal? 4 hours is no where near 7 hours, and yes my brightness is at 60%. Today I am testing with BT turned off.
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Four hours is normal. If you expect to get what Apple gets in their tests then you will be disappointed every time. Sure, you may have the settings on your computer set to what Apple used to get 7 hrs, but keep in mind that Apple would also use a brand new computer/battery for every test & they do the test in climate controlled rooms etc...
 
I'm going to be really constructive;

My 2.6GHz rPro gets 12hours battery life when just using Word with 3 notches of brightness.
 
My MacBook Pro 13" is around 5 hours of constant wifi use on about a 3rd of the brightness. It loses 10-15% a day just on standby in my bag though which sucks ass!

Hoping the Air I buy in a few weeks won't drop battery when closed as it's all flash parts :)
 
chrisrosemusic1 said:
My MacBook Pro 13" is around 5 hours of constant wifi use on about a 3rd of the brightness. It loses 10-15% a day just on standby in my bag though which sucks ass!

Hoping the Air I buy in a few weeks won't drop battery when closed as it's all flash parts :)
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If you're buying just for that reason I can assure you that my cMBP loses only 2% on standby. No SSD.
 
Thanks for all the input. I enjoy seeing what others views are on this topic.
To answer a few setup questions.
I am on 10.8.2. I set my display to 8 clicks which is 50% I guess. I turned off screen saver and closed all apps. Then I used Safari (Flash turned off) and made a point not to enable any flash images. I got 4:36 mins. before she died.
I guess ya-get-what-ya-get.
I was concerned that I may have a faulty system but many of have reported simular results. I am still very pleased with my Macbook.
 
zipur said:
Thanks for all the input. I enjoy seeing what others views are on this topic.
To answer a few setup questions.
I am on 10.8.2. I set my display to 8 clicks which is 50% I guess. I turned off screen saver and closed all apps. Then I used Safari (Flash turned off) and made a point not to enable any flash images. I got 4:36 mins. before she died.
I guess ya-get-what-ya-get.
I was concerned that I may have a faulty system but many of have reported simular results. I am still very pleased with my Macbook.
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I think you need to show it to apple. I travel a lot, and often nights, so with dim display (half) and wifi browsing internet, no heavy usage, just regular internet, emails, news etc., I'm getting about 5 hours and battery goes from 100% to approx 50-55%. Never tried it till the end but I believe with this usage it will be more than 8 hours for sure. I'm running latest ML with all updates RMBP.
 
snaky69 said:
That won't make a single bit of difference. You're simply throwing money out the window and into Apple's lap.
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You're telling me that a non moving architecture doesn't make any improvement to the standby time?? Thought the Air had a 30 day standby or am I wrong? - Nope seems I'm right (taken from tech specs on Air page) "Up to 7 hours wireless web

Up to 30 days standby time"

There's no mention of standby times on MBP at all so yes, I am correct.


And as for buying it for this reason - no, I like the form factor way more and after my recent PC purchase I no longer need a power house laptop - a mobile, lighter, more portable one is far more important now.
 
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chrisrosemusic1 said:
You're telling me that a non moving architecture doesn't make any improvement to the standby time?? Thought the Air had a 30 day standby or am I wrong? - Nope seems I'm right (taken from tech specs on Air page) "Up to 7 hours wireless web

Up to 30 days standby time"

There's no mention of standby times on MBP at all so yes, I am correct.


And as for buying it for this reason - no, I like the form factor way more and after my recent PC purchase I no longer need a power house laptop - a mobile, lighter, more portable one is far more important now.
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Once the computer enters standby, only the RAM is powered. The fact that Apple does not mention sleep times on their website isn't a proof either way. Buy a quart of high fructose corn syrup at your local grocery store, it doesn't say on the bottle that stuff is bad for you, yet it still is. Your proof is no proof at all.

Moving parts don't matter when the computer is in standby mode, for a very simple reason: they aren't moving.

RAM is RAM, and will need the same amount of power, in whichever laptop. I've seen my battery estimates over 200 hours(roughly 8.5 days) when coming out of sleep on a nearly full charge on my regular MBP.

I'm not trying to stir up anything here, just putting the info out there.
 
snaky69 said:
Once the computer enters standby, only the RAM is powered.
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I was under the impression that the contents of the RAM were written to the HDD when the computer went into standby. It may be possible that the MBA, being that it has a SSD standard, just powers down everything once it writes the contents of the RAM to the SSD and goes into standby, thus prolonging battery life.

In my very non-scientific study I found that my mid-2009 MBP took a LONG time to wake from sleep after upgrading to OSX 10.8. Once I upgraded my 250GB HDD to a 256GB SSD, this delay was shortened. After seeing this I came to the conclusion that Apple had slightly changed the sleep behaviour of their computers.
 
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