Help: New MBP, terrible battery life

[Hakka]

Hi --

I bought a new 15" MBP, 2.2 GHz i7, 8 GB RAM, 750 GB HD a month ago. It shipped with Lion.

I've never gotten more than an hour or two of battery life out of it. If I use Aperture for more than an hour, the battery will drain on me and it eventually shuts down. Same with watching a DVD -- it's about one hour max.

I took it in to the Apple Store and they said it was definitely unusual. However, it passed all their diagnostics, and the battery is showing full capacity (6400 mAh). They recommended I re-install the system on it, which I did. Didn't change anything. I haven't been back again, but I want to make sure it's not just me.

So I have a repeatable measurement here, can someone tell me what their battery life is (according to the menu bar) when playing a DVD on a similarly equipped machine?

Thanks,
-Hakka

 

[GGJstudios]

Read the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link. This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:

Apple Notebook Battery FAQ​

 

[steveca]

Hi --

I bought a new 15" MBP, 2.2 GHz i7, 8 GB RAM, 750 GB HD a month ago. It shipped with Lion.

I've never gotten more than an hour or two of battery life out of it. If I use Aperture for more than an hour, the battery will drain on me and it eventually shuts down. Same with watching a DVD -- it's about one hour max.

I took it in to the Apple Store and they said it was definitely unusual. However, it passed all their diagnostics, and the battery is showing full capacity (6400 mAh). They recommended I re-install the system on it, which I did. Didn't change anything. I haven't been back again, but I want to make sure it's not just me.

So I have a repeatable measurement here, can someone tell me what their battery life is (according to the menu bar) when playing a DVD on a similarly equipped machine?

Thanks,
-Hakka

Defintiely not just you. I used to have the same problem with my old MacBook pro... Eventually the battery died really quickly... It was a faulty battery...

 

[Hakka]

Thx for the FAQ. Apple quotes 7 hours of web browsing. My system is definitely out of that range. My MBP is just sitting there, *no* applications open, wifi off, Bluetooth off, screen at 50%, and the battery life is still barely over two hours.

 

[GGJstudios]

Thx for the FAQ. Apple quotes 7 hours of web browsing. My system is definitely out of that range. My MBP is just sitting there, *no* applications open, wifi off, Bluetooth off, screen at 50%, and the battery life is still barely over two hours.

Launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes". Then look to see what may be consuming system resources. You could also try resetting the SMC.

 

[Hakka]

CPU usage is at near-zero. I have not reset the SMC. I'll try that; thanks.