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Battery Life

A

andyjslin

macrumors member
Original poster
Hi peeps,

I've googled and mroogled battery life in Mountain lion and I don't get a clear, and recent, details on the battery life of MBPs (5,1 - mid 2009). I was wondering has any updates? I am very reliant on my battery.

Cheers,
 
andyjslin said:
I've googled and mroogled battery life in Mountain lion and I don't get a clear, and recent, details on the battery life of MBPs (5,1 - mid 2009). I was wondering has any updates? I am very reliant on my battery.
Click to expand...
There are many factors that impact your battery life far more than which OS version you're running. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link for details, including tips on how to maximize your battery life.

This should answer most, if not all, of your battery/charging questions:
 
Thanks for that informative thread. What I meant was that whether this OS update has many processes running, I've read that spotlight was draining their battery as the hard drive was working over time.
 
andyjslin said:
Thanks for that informative thread. What I meant was that whether this OS update has many processes running, I've read that spotlight was draining their battery as the hard drive was working over time.
Click to expand...
There are quite a few processes running, no matter which OS version you're running. Spotlight won't put significant drain on system resources unless it's initially indexing a drive. After the initial index, it won't take much to keep that index updated.
 
andyjslin said:
Hi peeps,

I've googled and mroogled battery life in Mountain lion and I don't get a clear, and recent, details on the battery life of MBPs (5,1 - mid 2009). I was wondering has any updates? I am very reliant on my battery.

Cheers,
Click to expand...

Battery life should be about the same from updating OS X versions. I got around 5 hours in Lion and about the same (if not more) in ML
 
Thanks mate, appreciate it.

There is one or two threads in Apple discussion that highlight the poor battery life. I'll suck and see.
 
GGJstudios said:
There are many factors that impact your battery life far more than which OS version you're running. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link for details, including tips on how to maximize your battery life.

This should answer most, if not all, of your battery/charging questions:
Click to expand...

Lol, you gotta have that on a macro or something. Good job spreading the same link on every battery thread. Wish they would just make it a sticky. Though I think fighting battery ignorance is like fighting cockroaches, no matter how many battles you win they keep coming. 😉
 
With Lion, my MBP 13" Mid 2009 has had over 7h left after being fully charged.
Yesterday i installed ML and now it says 2:03 left when it's 100% charged...bitch please?!

(Also it gets hot like hell)

EDIT: Maybe this helps:

2nltoqh.jpg
 
Last edited:
MoxFulder said:
With Lion, my MBP 13" Mid 2009 has had over 7h left after being fully charged.
Yesterday i installed ML and now it says 2:03 left when it's 100% charged...bitch please?!

(Also it gets hot like hell)
Click to expand...
As your time remaining is a constantly-changing estimate, based on the current workload on your system, a shorter time on a full charge would indicate you have more load on your system at the moment. That, combined with the higher heat, indicates you have apps/processes running that put higher demands on your system, draining the battery faster. Use iStat Pro to get accurate readings of your temps.
  1. Launch Activity Monitor
  2. Change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes"
  3. Click on the CPU column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top).
  4. Click on the System Memory tab at the bottom.
  5. Take a screen shot of the entire Activity Monitor window, then scroll down to see the rest of the list, take another screen shot
  6. Post your screenshots.
 
Last edited:
ggjstudios said:
as your time remaining is a constantly-changing estimate, based on the current workload on your system, a shorter time on a full charge would indicate you have more load on your system at the moment. That, combined with the higher heat, indicates you have apps/processes running that put higher demands on your system, draining the battery faster. Use istat pro to get accurate readings of your temps.
  1. launch activity monitor
  2. change "my processes" at the top to "all processes"
  3. click on the cpu column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top).
  4. click on the [/b]system memory[/b] tab at the bottom.
  5. take a screen shot of the entire activity monitor window, then scroll down to see the rest of the list, take another screen shot
  6. post your screenshots.
Click to expand...


act1.jpg

act2.jpg

act3.jpg

act4.jpg

act5.jpg
 
I don't see anything in your screen shots that indicates high resource usage. What does your time remaining look like now? Remember, it changes constantly and isn't highly accurate.
 
GGJstudios said:
What does your time remaining look like now? Remember, it changes constantly and isn't highly accurate.
Click to expand...

Saying it isn't highly accurate is putting it nicely! I almost wish they'd get rid of the "time remaining" so people wouldn't freak out about it anymore. But then you wouldn't have to post nearly as often, and what on earth would you do with all that free time? 🙂
 
sweetbrat said:
Saying it isn't highly accurate is putting it nicely! I almost wish they'd get rid of the "time remaining" so people wouldn't freak out about it anymore. But then you wouldn't have to post nearly as often, and what on earth would you do with all that free time? 🙂
Click to expand...
LOL! I guess I'd have more time to answer all the kazillion other non-battery-related questions that I've been answering!
 
GGJstudios said:
I don't see anything in your screen shots that indicates high resource usage. What does your time remaining look like now? Remember, it changes constantly and isn't highly accurate.
Click to expand...

I know it's changing constantly.
Still says the same, after deactivating Tuxera NTFS now it shows 3:41. (wow)

@sweetbrat: I could also say since ML, the percentage drops from 100% to 50% in about 2 hours, while doing nothing.
 
My Battery life fluctuates

I have a C2Duo Macbook Pro (mid-2009) model on Mountain Lion (clean-installed). After charging full to 100%, my battery shows remaining time of about 5h 30mins. Then after a few minutes it shows 4h 20mins before changing to 4h 45mins. Then again, it fluctuates back to 5h 01mins. At the end it doesn't last more than 2-3 hours. What I don't understand is the fact that the battery actually increase, decrease, increase again in remaining time.; non-sensically.

Of course the battery capacity is quite low; but this has been the case since Lion OSX which I have been using for about a year.

screenshot20120808at231.png
 
Last edited:
Drew017 said:
Battery life should be about the same from updating OS X versions. I got around 5 hours in Lion and about the same (if not more) in ML
Click to expand...

http://www.webpronews.com/mountain-lion-may-be-hurting-your-macbooks-battery-life-2012-08

Similar reports came about when 10.7 was put out.

I put back SL on my 2011 MBP because of battery life concerns, and TBH I'd rather have ML installed... but not until Apple starts to fix things, and not hype up superficial releases with 200 new features, of which half are esoteric and the other half I'd likely never use as they don't offer OS benefits but meaningless treacle (e.g. onscreen displays, Twitter integration, etc). If ML and L both do 5 hours on a laptop that was sold with a 7+ hour claim, then I don't think it's unfair to have and retain that expectation. Especially as SL was sold with the hype of being more efficient and from a company that claims to tightly integrate the software to the hardware, resulting in the claim of superior specs and conditions.

Efficiency makes a strong selling point. Useless bloat does not. The social media garbage, automated email updating, and other needless things are sucking away battery life and that hampers productivity... and "productivity" is not getting an insta-update from 500 purported web-based friends about how their cats each delivered 17 kittens, all named "Tabby", "Mittens", or "Spot"... The core OS seems otherwise unchanged, so SL is hardly outdated... quite the contrary, it seems more efficient...
 
andy8 said:
What I don't understand is the fact that the battery actually increase, decrease, increase again in remaining time.; non-sensically.
Click to expand...
From the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the Battery FAQ that was posted earlier in this thread:
  • Your "time remaining" indication is an ever-changing estimate, based on the current workload of your system. It will fluctuate up and down from minute to minute as your power demands change. It is not perfectly accurate, but only an estimate.
Click to expand...
 
Guys, lot of ppl notice this problem. It is a issue that apple is on it. They just seed 10.8.1 for fixing this issue.
 
Apple is sending out surveys to talk about the battery issue, the new update will address it...

There is a battery drain issue, I feel like this guy gets money on the side for the extra hits to the battery page, lol
 
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