Battery life

[oakrrl]

Just got my new rMB (1.3, 512) and I love it. It's faster & more responsive than the reviews led me to expect, and I actually prefer the keyboard to my standard Apple kb.

BUT...after an hour of use - just browsing the web and email - I'm down to 75% from a fully charged battery. This would mean 4 hours of battery life, which is abysmal.

I have "put hard disk to sleep when possible" on, and screen at about 75% brightness.

Anyone else having this problem? Do I have a defective battery? Any tips?

 

[tbirdparis]

If you literally just got it and have just started using it right now, it's possible that it might be running a full spotlight index as a background task. This would probably contribute significantly to an unexpectedly high consumption of power, until it's done. At least that's one thing I've read other people mentioning as being the case. The other thing I've read is that apparently it can take a battery cycle or two before things settle down, maximum performance is reached and battery time remaining estimates by the OS become more accurate.

I'd wait a few days and see if things improve. In the meantime, keep checking to see if there aren't any parasitic processes going on - use activity monitor to see if there's anything happening such as a crashed flash player thread going nuts and consuming 150% of CPU. Or try turning off Bluetooth if you don't actively use it - maybe there's a device nearby that your MacBook keeps polling for?

 

[mkelly]

Anyone else having this problem? Do I have a defective battery? Any tips?

As tbirdparis said, it's probable that your machine is indexing all its files to make them searchable in Spotlight. If you click on the Spotlight magnifying glass icon in the top-right of your menubar, does it say anything about indexing in progress? Also, if you've just set up your email in Mail.app and you've got a particularly large mail account, that could be the culprit. Same with a big Photos library, if you sync your photos to iCloud.

Initial syncs/indexing of your data can be very hard on your battery - regardless of whether it's a MacBook or MacBook Pro. If that's what's going on, leave it plugged in until the sync finishes and then your battery life should go back to normal.

 

[wowee]

I am in the same boat - i've had mine now for over a month. Same model. Love it like you said, but i'm lucky if i can get 5 hours with web browsing/email with 75% brightness. Am probably going to ask for a replacement.

 

[zhenya]

You can't really objectively assess battery life until you've lived with the thing for at least a week, preferably more. At that point, you can start chasing down anything that might be causing a drain. Screen brightness is a huge one on the MacBook. 75% I would guess 6-7 hours would be tops. At 100% I would guess more like 5.

 

[T5BRICK]

Which browser are you using? Are you viewing a lot of flash content or streaming video?

 

[Dark Void]

I'll second the browser - if you're using Chrome by chance it is likely to be part of what you are experiencing.

 

[oakrrl]

Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions. Spotlight doesn't seem to be indexing; I'm using Safari without Flash, and all mail accounts are synced. But I have read it takes a few battery cycles before things settle down, so I'll see what happens over the next week or so.