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Late 2008 (Unibody) Macbook Pro Battery life 2 hours 30 minutes?

tony4d

tony4d

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 10, 2008
67
1
Is this normal? Or, based on your experiences should I take this to an apple store?

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I feel like 2 hours and 30 minutes with the more powerful gpu is good, but I feel like it should be more like 3 hours and 30 minutes considering Apple says 5 hours with better battery life settings.

FYI, I have bluetooth off, airport on, and screen brightness almost all the way up.
 
The battery counter takes into effect what you are doing at the moment, so the time can often jump wildly when the battery has higher charges. It's pretty accurate when you are down to 6% or something, but a 97% it's practically just pulling times out of its ***.
 
With my Brightness all the way up, Airport on, BT off, at 100% Im Getting around 4 hours with my Early 08 MBP, which cant switch to the 9400, despite having 167 cycles on it, and 93% Health.

I Would keep check on it, and if its accurate, take it to an apple store.
 
Yes, the brightness setting will drain the battery very quickly. After installing the 10.5.6 update and recent MBP updates, it looks like I am getting over five hours with 9400 card, no back lit keyboard, bluetooth and about 2/3 on display brightness. BTW, I am on the late 2008 MBP 2.4.
 
J the Ninja said:
The battery counter takes into effect what you are doing at the moment, so the time can often jump wildly when the battery has higher charges. It's pretty accurate when you are down to 6% or something, but a 97% it's practically just pulling times out of its ***.
Click to expand...

Interesting, I didn't think about that too much. I was just checking it at my desk with an external monitor hooked up. Eliminating that it does show 3 hours 10 minutes. That's more like it, but I can't help but feel its still disappointing.

I dunno, as suggested by another poster. I think I'll actually try it and time it to see what I get. If I'm only getting like 3 hours I think its at least worth a trip to the apple store to get someone's opinion there.
 
Are there any programs that throttle the cpu's down when they are not needed. Something along the lines of amd's quiet and cool.
 
nippyjun said:
Are there any programs that throttle the cpu's down when they are not needed. Something along the lines of amd's quiet and cool.
Click to expand...

I'd suggest using CoolBook to undervolt your CPU. It'll run a bit cooler and save you some battery life. I have my 2006 MBP with a 2.33 GHz C2D running at 1.8 GHz only, when on battery power.
 
same issue here

tony4d said:
Is this normal? Or, based on your experiences should I take this to an apple store?

I feel like 2 hours and 30 minutes with the more powerful gpu is good, but I feel like it should be more like 3 hours and 30 minutes considering Apple says 5 hours with better battery life settings.

FYI, I have bluetooth off, airport on, and screen brightness almost all the way up.
Click to expand...

I have already returned one Macbook Pro 2.4 to the Apple Store and having the exact same problem now again on my new Macbook Pro.

WLAN off, Bluetooth off, Display brightness all the way down I get only about 2-2,5 hours of battery life.

Over night in sleep mode the battery also looses lots of power, around 20-30%.

Also charging the battery takes ages.

I guess I have to return this machine as well...
 
MattZani said:
With my Brightness all the way up, Airport on, BT off, at 100% Im Getting around 4 hours with my Early 08 MBP, which cant switch to the 9400, despite having 167 cycles on it, and 93% Health.

I Would keep check on it, and if its accurate, take it to an apple store.
Click to expand...

early 08 MBP penryn's actually get significantly (10-15% if I recall correctly) better battery life than the new unibody MBPs
 
on the other hand

well seems to me that apple's specs were pretty accurate after all. I'm running the unibody mbp 2.4 and my battery life meter gives me readings between 4:48hr and 5:57hr while connected via airport and with screen brightness halfway up/down. The average battery life i get while browsing the web, and doing other non-intense work would be definitely 5 hours, if not a lil more. O i should mention that i'm using a 7200rpm harddrive? that's supposed to cut down battery life by an hour. Just thought i should share this...
 
tony4d said:
Is this normal? Or, based on your experiences should I take this to an apple store?

web.png


I feel like 2 hours and 30 minutes with the more powerful gpu is good, but I feel like it should be more like 3 hours and 30 minutes considering Apple says 5 hours with better battery life settings.

FYI, I have bluetooth off, airport on, and screen brightness almost all the way up.
Click to expand...

I was experiencing about the same results with my late 08 mbp.

Try selecting the "better battery performance" for the graphics. This significantly improved the battery performance when I did this.
 
danoan522 said:
well seems to me that apple's specs were pretty accurate after all. I'm running the unibody mbp 2.4 and my battery life meter gives me readings between 4:48hr and 5:57hr while connected via airport and with screen brightness halfway up/down. The average battery life i get while browsing the web, and doing other non-intense work would be definitely 5 hours, if not a lil more. O i should mention that i'm using a 7200rpm harddrive? that's supposed to cut down battery life by an hour. Just thought i should share this...
Click to expand...

how many application you open to get 5 hours ?, i only get 3 hours now when only using it for browsing. :(
any suggestion ?
 
I am disappointed at the amount of battery life in my UMBP also. I was expecting at least 5 hours, not a maximum of 5 hours if you're lucky.
 
Well more than a year passed. And yes I am bringing this thread back.
The main reason been that I hope to get some updates from other late 2008 MBP users, if you still are out there.

What is the expected time you should get with the battery for these models?
Apple specs vs real results.

I have a 2.8Ghz 15". And I get 2.5 hours for web browsing, email and mainly mac rumors, this is with the better battery life setting.

With the high performance no way I get to 1 hour.

I had calibrated the batteries, I have 2, and with both the same thing.

Those of you who asked apple for a replacement, what you got? I mean in terms of battery performance.

After all these months what is the performance you get? Are you keeping your late 2008 macs or have you replaced them with recent ones?


Thanks for your replies.
 
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