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

2.5 hours on the upper card? sounds good to me. i get 2 to 2.5 tops on the integrated card...and thats on the 2.53, not on the 2.8. Id say the battery is about 8 months old
 
Battery is 1.5 years old. 322 cycles. 90% health left (Capacity is 4158mAh). I can now get anywhere between 2.5 and 4.5 hours of battery life from a single charge on the integrated (1.5-2.5 on Dedicated).

Web browsing really kills my battery life. If you're on Pages or doing some other plain simple work, then expect the battery to last longer (even up to 5 hours in some cases for me!)
 
Well, my newest battery, has only 2 months, and it has only 26 cycles, and 100% health, after fully charging it the meter reads 2 h 38 minutes. Only Mail and Safari open, no keyboard illumination and brightness to the lowest level.
 
I got a MBP 15'4 unibody late 2008 2.53 4GB Ram and 500GB Seagate Momentum XT HDD. with display 1/2 brightness and keyboard 1/2 brightness i only got a battery life of 2:30min max on 9600GT while idealing CPU usage at 0% with my battery cycle was 296 and fully charge capacity 4394 mAh. My apple care warranty are until year 2012 so should i send this battery for claim or its suppose to behave in such?:(
 
Battery Advice

Hey everyone, im having battery issues too - the most i can squeeze out is about 2.5 hrs. I bought my 15" unibody MBP in Jan 2009 (so i think its the late 2008 model). 2.4 ghz, intel core 2 duo with 4gb mem. with bluetooth off, brightness on the LOWEST setting, no backlit keyboard and just running web browser (no flash), i can barely get 2.5 hrs. 207 load cycles, battery capacity is at 94% (4363mAH) according to coconut battery. Ive regularly cycled my battery (once a month) and have tried all sorts of resets including PRAM and SMC with no luck or change in battery life. running 10.6.5 OSX. Any advice?

My fiance's older 13" white 2008 macbook 2.4ghz with 2gb mem and MANY more cycles gets MUCH better battery life..wtf!?!?
 
I am still with my old late 2008 MBP, and using 2 batteries has been the only annoying workaround for this.

A couple of questions:

(1) Has anyone out there that still has a late 2008 MacBook Pro, is able to achieve this real life results?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2645/12


(2) Any 3rd party battery solutions out there?
 
McGiord said:
(2) Any 3rd party battery solutions out there?
Click to expand...
Based on the number who have reported problems with 3rd party batteries, I would never trust or recommend a battery that didn't come from Apple. The savings aren't worth it, IMO.
 
your lucky to get that much...I get maybe 2hourd on the 9600. Im using photpshop though. I recommend buy a 2nd battery if you are on the go a lot.
 
It's not out of the ordinary if you ask me. Like others have said, settings such as Brightness are known to drain your battery and it also depends on the extent of the programs you are running.

I wouldn't worry about getting a new one until it is quite low.
 
GGJstudios said:
Based on the number who have reported problems with 3rd party batteries, I would never trust or recommend a battery that didn't come from Apple. The savings aren't worth it, IMO.
Click to expand...

Which brand/models are you referring to?
I have only found this one so far:
http://www.newertech.com/products/macbpro_batt_15_uni.php
And the gain seems to be very low, but I am not able to get the battery to run more than 2 hours now.
 
McGiord said:
I am still with my old late 2008 MBP, and using 2 batteries has been the only annoying workaround for this.

A couple of questions:

(1) Has anyone out there that still has a late 2008 MacBook Pro, is able to achieve this real life results?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2645/12


(2) Any 3rd party battery solutions out there?
Click to expand...
Good day.

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I thought there may be other MacBook Pro 15" (Late 2008) users around, wondering the same questions presented here. Quick history about myself: I'm a long time lurker and was introduced to the Mac world only a little short of a year ago. I'm a 19-year-old student and my first Mac computer was the MacBook Pro 13" (Mid 2010), which I initially bought for the portability factor. Later, I discovered the limitations of the 13" model and decided to sell my MacBook Pro in order to buy a more powerful one.

My current MacBook Pro is the 15" model (Late 2008) with 2.8Ghz processor and 8GB RAM. It still has AppleCare warranty, which was the primary reason I decided to go with a machine this old, but the original owner had taken good care of it anyway and the battery has only 42 loadcycles on it. When my MacBook Pro is fully charged with the GeForce 9400M active, I used to get 3:30 hours of use. I said 'used to', because occasionally the system would freeze during moderate load for no reason, even with just Safari open. I took it to my Apple Authorized Reseller for repair and sure enough there was a problem with the Logic Board, which then was promptly replaced, all under AppleCare warranty. Now with practically a new computer, the same settings I used to have before now give me around 4 hours of use.

I do not know how or why this happens, but I can in fact use the computer for a longer period of time now, even though the battery is still the same as well as all other components, just a new Logic Board. Upon closer inspection the best explanation I could find was that the thermal paste on the GPU(s) and possible the CPU were incorrectly applied at the factory, causing the components to run hotter than normal, thus requiring more cooling and decreasing battery life. Just a thought, I'm no expert here.

Regardless of this mysterious occurrence (could it be a placebo?), I am very happy with this computer and it definitely is an upgrade compared to my previous 13" model (Mid 2010). Still, I found one particular thing annoying to say the least, which was the tendency of the CPU to reach temperatures as high as 95C under high load. In comparison, my previous MacBook Pro would max out at 81C when exporting a video project in iMovie. After a little investigation, I found out about CoolBook. Coming from the PC world with extensive knowledge in subjects such as undervolting and overclocking, I decided to pay the $10 and try it out. The results were amazing.

My configuration is as follows (for those using CoolBook):

On Adapter, the following frequency / voltage pairs are set:
2261 Mhz / 0.9375 V
2527 Mhz / 0.9875 V
2793 Mhz / 1.0500 V

Likewise, on Battery I have the following enabled:
2261 Mhz / 0.9375 V
2527 Mhz / 0.9875 V

If you noticed, I have disabled the CPU from reaching 2.8Ghz when operating off battery power. This keeps the CPU from being supplied anything more than 1 volts, and that has really helped not only keep the temperatures lower, but also extend battery life without any significant performance hit. With smcFanControl pushing the fans to spin a bit faster, my idle temperature is 39C and with the brightness set all the way up, I can squeeze out almost 4 hours with only Safari and Mail running. Of course, if I hit up YouTube or anything else with heavy content, that number will decrease a bit, but I do get at least 3 hours of use even with moderate load.

Here's the best part about CoolBook: with the stock Intel SpeedStep setting, the CPU would take 1.1750V when operating at 2.8Ghz frequency, but now I can achieve the same frequency with only 1.0500V, thus lowering the maximum temperature under high load from 95C to 82C. That's more than 10C drop in temperature, which in my opinion is well worth the $10 that CoolBook costs. One more thing to note, the frequency / voltage pairs must be tested thoroughly to ensure they are stable, and with the above settings I ran CPUTest for 30 minutes for each frequency / voltage pair successfully. However, I must warn you that no two CPUs are the same, so if you have the same MacBook Pro configuration as I do, it does not necessarily mean that you can go as low in voltage as I did. It's best to try for yourself, but I personally have found CoolBook to work tremendously.

Having all this said, with my MacBook Pro optimized the way it currently is, I can easily get 3 hours of actual battery life on both the GeForce 9400M and the GeForce 9600M GT. Using gfxCardStatus I can switch between the two on-the-fly, which is a pretty neat feature. One thing I discovered is that when the GeForce 9600M GT is active, so is the GeForce 9400M, but only for OpenCL operations. Definitely a nice boost in software optimized for OpenCL or Grand Central Dispatch, but also a noticeable decrease in battery life. Keep this in mind in case you have OpenCL optimized software, such as Final Cut Pro X.

I am still exploring and hoping to find new tricks to squeeze every bit of performance from this MacBook Pro that I can get and I'm very happy with this computer, but it's really sad to see that the newer 15" models do not have ExpressCard. Thunderbolt may prove to be a better interconnect in the near future, but one reason I decided to go with this particular model was the ExpressCard slot. In any case, I'm excited to see what Apple comes up with next! P.S. Shouldn't Lion be released today? Let's hope it comes with enough optimizations to make battery life better on these machines, because with my previous MacBook Pro I could very easily get 7 hours of actual use! But then again, it had a sloppy CPU and just an integrated graphics card to boot, so I'm not complaining :p

~Yousif
 
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