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Late 2008 UMBP only gets 3 hours of battery life with the 9400?

Whackintosh

Whackintosh

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 8, 2009
435
14
Montreal, Quebec
I scored a refurb 2:53 MBP early last month and while I love it, the battery only gets me about 3 hours on a full charge, and that's non-cpu-taxing usage (IE web browsing via ethernet, Word etc, no wi-fi, no bluetooth). This is on the 9400, not the 9600, with screen at roughly 50% brightness. Does that sound right to you guys? I thought it would get me at least as much time as my 2006 coreduo Whitebook gets?
 
Sounds low.

Download coconut battery to check it your battery holds as much as it should
 
Agreed, this sounds low. I have had my uMBP since Oct, ~ 2 months ago a friend and I did a battery test (he had a new White MacBook with 9400M). We both got 5 hours with semi dim screens and no wifi or blutooth. I average 4 hours with wifi and screen 4 bars from brightest. Thats with the 9400m just web browsing.
 
i seriously dont understand how everyone on this forum gets 5+ hours...

i even went to the apple store and the unreplaceable battery barely gets 5 hours. i think somehow these late 08 owners want to feel proud of an imaginary battery life. realistically, it lasts around 3 hours. the only way i can see someone getting 5 hours is if they LIGHTLY surf the web and i mean lightly ie. load a page, and keep it on there for 5 minutes, and just pause and let the screen dim, and then let the battery time spike up and post on macrumors that you get 5 hours but once you start sufing more intensely, the battery life estimated time goes down to 3 hours but you never mention that
 
sukanas said:
i seriously dont understand how everyone on this forum gets 5+ hours...

i even went to the apple store and the unreplaceable battery barely gets 5 hours. i think somehow these late 08 owners want to feel proud of an imaginary battery life. realistically, it lasts around 3 hours. the only way i can see someone getting 5 hours is if they LIGHTLY surf the web and i mean lightly ie. load a page, and keep it on there for 5 minutes, and just pause and let the screen dim, and then let the battery time spike up and post on macrumors that you get 5 hours but once you start sufing more intensely, the battery life estimated time goes down to 3 hours but you never mention that
Click to expand...

+1
 
After I calibrated my battery, I get 4+ realistic hours of battery life with brightness at 1/3. When you turn airport/bt off, it shoots over 5.
 
sukanas said:
i seriously dont understand how everyone on this forum gets 5+ hours...

i even went to the apple store and the unreplaceable battery barely gets 5 hours. i think somehow these late 08 owners want to feel proud of an imaginary battery life. realistically, it lasts around 3 hours. the only way i can see someone getting 5 hours is if they LIGHTLY surf the web and i mean lightly ie. load a page, and keep it on there for 5 minutes, and just pause and let the screen dim, and then let the battery time spike up and post on macrumors that you get 5 hours but once you start sufing more intensely, the battery life estimated time goes down to 3 hours but you never mention that
Click to expand...

Seriously...couldn't agree more.
 
I get 3-4 realistic hours of usage (wifi, firefox, email) on my early 2008. If the OP is really only doing what was specified, the battery might be on the way out. My battery is around 85% health, so users of the same MBP could get better battery.

OP, install Coconut Battery and post a screenshot of the application while running.
 
The late 2008 model only had an >5 Hour battery life right? And apple's figures are generally not close. However with my mid-2009 MBP, I've still squeezed 7:30hrs out of this on one charge, I guess it can vary as they're all different.

As mentioned before, try coconut battery to ensure your battery hasn't lost it's ability to hold as much charge.
 
I'm in the "can't get more than 4 hrs" club myself. This was when it was brand new as well. Two years later and it still hovers around 3:57 and that's with the normal parameters (surfing, screen at half bright, with minimum apps running).
 
My Late 2008 MBP is only 16 months old.

85 load cycles.

Original Capacity of 4600, current is only 4341. That's 94%.

With the screen as dim as it can go, wifi on, adium, mail, and safari on doing web browsing with a few windows open. I get around 2 hours and 15 minutes of life and that doesn't seem right at all...

Can this be confirmed or explained?
 
Tanj said:
My Late 2008 MBP is only 16 months old.

85 load cycles.

Original Capacity of 4600, current is only 4341. That's 94%.

With the screen as dim as it can go, wifi on, adium, mail, and safari on doing web browsing with a few windows open. I get around 2 hours and 15 minutes of life and that doesn't seem right at all...

Can this be confirmed or explained?
Click to expand...


have you tried to recalibrate the battery per apple's guidelines?

I know I was in a similar boat not long ago, and two full calibration cycles has me up in the 4 hour usage range.
 
I can get a 2 hour movie and 3 hours of browsing out of my late 2008 - screen brightness about 70%.

So, yeah. Something is up with your battery.
 
sukanas said:
i seriously dont understand how everyone on this forum gets 5+ hours...

i even went to the apple store and the unreplaceable battery barely gets 5 hours. i think somehow these late 08 owners want to feel proud of an imaginary battery life. realistically, it lasts around 3 hours. the only way i can see someone getting 5 hours is if they LIGHTLY surf the web and i mean lightly ie. load a page, and keep it on there for 5 minutes, and just pause and let the screen dim, and then let the battery time spike up and post on macrumors that you get 5 hours but once you start sufing more intensely, the battery life estimated time goes down to 3 hours but you never mention that
Click to expand...

+2. If you do an average, 3 hours, maybe 3 hours and a bit is what you will really get with the odd usage noted by sukanas.
 
Whackintosh said:
(IE web browsing via ethernet, Word etc, no wi-fi, no bluetooth).
Click to expand...

Sorry, just to clarify, does IE mean Internet Explorer, as in BootCamp Windows or I.e. as in Latin?

My Santa-Rosa 15" is has 150 cycles on the clock, shows 75% health and I only hope to get anything close to three hours if I turn Wi-Fi off and turn brightness all the way down.
In a typical case, a bit more than two hours.
AND, I am waiting for the bloody Arrandales...:mad:
 
Tanj said:
My Late 2008 MBP is only 16 months old.

85 load cycles.

Original Capacity of 4600, current is only 4341. That's 94%.

With the screen as dim as it can go, wifi on, adium, mail, and safari on doing web browsing with a few windows open. I get around 2 hours and 15 minutes of life and that doesn't seem right at all...

Can this be confirmed or explained?
Click to expand...

I scored a 2.53ghz refurb last year in June and I'm getting about the same as this guy. I'm pretty sure that my battery is going to need replacing soon as I'm at 87% on 180 cycles - just got to wait til it drops down below 80%/<300cycles which is the Apple guideline for them to replace.

Just out of interest are you guys running leopard or snow leopard?
 
Just did a calibration yesterday and I'm down to 84%/182 cycles. Genius bar here we come...
 
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