Laptop loses charge quickly with cover closed

[mlevin77]

I just bought a new MacBook Pro with a solid state (flash memory) disk. The battery life is good while I'm using it, but if I leave it with the cover off for a few days (asleep, I assume), it'll be mostly discharged when I open it up. I assume this isn't normal - it shouldn't be losing that much charge when closed and hybernating. I don't have "wake for ethernet access" checked, if that makes a difference. What's going on - why won't it hybernate?

Mike

 

[snaky69]

A few days is enough to drain any laptop's battery down when asleep.

When asleep the computer sends electricity to the RAM to keep whatever's on it.. well, on it. That way when you open it back up things are as you left them.

The battery should be draining about 1% per hour. A rough guesstimate would be 3 to 4 full 24hour days to complete drainage on a full charge.

 

[sine-nomine]

Macs used to have much longer sleep times before the Intel switch. My old iBook could sleep for about a week and a half before the battery would be drained. Unfortunately, the Intel MacBooks I've used seem to last a few days tops. Wonder what they changed?

 

[w00t951]

I'm guessing its something with the new sleep system. Before, the contents of the disk were saved to active RAM, which remained powered on. Now, the contents are saved into the HDD and the computer powers off, allowing the removal of the battery during sleep. I'm not sure how this would decrease battery life (as it seems to be taking less power than the old sleep system) but that's the only idea I have. Well, Apple could have done something to the way the hardware manages power while the computer is at sleep. Other than that, the normal rate of decline for a battery appears to be about 1-2% per hour of sleep.

 

[zapro]

You can dictate the behavior when sleeping the machine.

Look here: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070302210328928