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Leopard seems to kill battery health

M

Mattia Sullini

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 27, 2007
19
0
This is my story: bought the macbook pro in late 2006, and used almost as a desktop replacement, so that i knew i would have stressed battery. Then i was quite happy even with a 85% health with 162 cycles.
Then upgrated to Leopard.
Now battery health is at 43% with 171 cycles.
battery problem? You could say...but what if even my brand new second battery used maybe for 6 hours and with 2 (two!) cycles dropped already to 92%?

At least i am not the only one to have this problem. Check this link http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6208848

I believe anyway that at Apple they are aware of this, since the guy at assistance, after having realized i am not a complete noob and that i already performed all the reconditioning procedures ever conceived by a human beeing admitted they know about this and told me they would have called me back soon...still waiting but it was only 1 hour ago!

I'm updating this post as soon as i get news.
 
It's just like how XP users felt moving to Vista. A heavier OS that requires more resources to do the same things as a lighter OS will give you worse battery life. Tiger's the lighter OS; Leopard's the heavier one!
 
heatmiser said:
It's just like how XP users felt moving to Vista. A heavier OS that requires more resources to do the same things as a lighter OS will give you worse battery life. Tiger's the lighter OS; Leopard's the heavier one!
Click to expand...

Well, you say that, but I'm getting the same battery life in Leopard as I was in Tiger. Go figure.....
 
I am getting a new battery for free...i hope that the update i did last week will help me avoiding this battery to die as well as the other two.
 
I'm on Tiger with a Macbook 2Ghz Core 2 Duo. Its gone through 70 charges and my battery is still on 100%.

My girlfriend however has a Leopard machine with a later Macbook model with only 29 charges yet her health percentage has dropped already.

Throwing in my story thats all.
 
Strange my BlackBook is at 8 cycles and still has 100% capacity. Running Leopard.
 
My MacBook 2.2G SR with Leopard still has 100% health after 19 cycles. Actually the capacity is 5317 mAh which is 117mAh more than the original 5200 mAh.
 
what's the damage one gets if they always use it plugged to mains? I hardly ever use it away from a power point. Is this good for the battery or not?
 
bov said:
so if your battery starts sucking before the 1 year warranty runs out, apple will replace it for free?
Click to expand...

yes.

got mine replaced under AppleCare through my university's tech shop. My problem battery died with Tiger though.
 
bov said:
so if your battery starts sucking before the 1 year warranty runs out, apple will replace it for free?
Click to expand...

Only if it falls under a certain health with few cycles...do not know what are the parameters, but i read somewhere that few cycles means less than 300.
 
Mattia Sullini said:
Only if it falls under a certain health with few cycles...do not know what are the parameters, but i read somewhere that few cycles means less than 300.
Click to expand...
Well I'm at 50 cycles on my MBP and I have 98% according to CoconutBattery. It's only 5 months old. I guess that means I could get another battery, but reading others comments on here on different threads. Mine seems good for load cycles.

I re-calibrated not long ago and got 100% again straight after but as soon as I had to take the charger out and then putting it back in it went straight back to 98% anyway *shrug*
 
I can't say as I have seen a huge difference between the battery life of the MacBook using Leopard or Tiger (of course my original MacBook had to be replaced as it came very close to melting) so I don't know if that is an accurate statement. But judging on how much battery time I have left at any given moment, they seem comparable.
 
Concorde Rules said:
Same here.

Don't know what people are moaning about :confused:
Click to expand...

I moaning about the fact that since when i installed Leopard both my batteries begun to lose health. Too quickly. Maybe this is model-related, but it is undeniable that a problem sussist...or both me and the other people reporting the same problem in the attached link i provided in the first post got into an amazing coincidence?
 
With an XP ( or, I presume, Vista) laptop, you can set the processor speed - you can throttle it down for a slower CPU,but significantly increased battery life. Indeed, my old Dell would dynamically do so as and when it needed the power.

Do Mac's even do this? I've not seen it mentioned, and I'd have thought given that Apple consider a screensaver an OS feature worthy of note, that they'd mention this if it were being done.

Doug
 
djellison said:
With an XP ( or, I presume, Vista) laptop, you can set the processor speed - you can throttle it down for a slower CPU,but significantly increased battery life. Indeed, my old Dell would dynamically do so as and when it needed the power.

Do Mac's even do this? I've not seen it mentioned, and I'd have thought given that Apple consider a screensaver an OS feature worthy of note, that they'd mention this if it were being done.

Doug
Click to expand...

Not nearly as much as a PC will. A Mac will throttle down from 2ghz to 1.5ghz, apparently; no more. In Windows, you can use Notebook Hardware Control (a free program) to run your processor at half its clock speed, or anywhere in between, dramatically prolonging battery life. There is no such equivalent in OS X. There's Coolbook, but it requires payment. So basically, a lot of battery power is wasted in OS X due to an inability to seriously throttle down the processor.
 
Mattia Sullini said:
I moaning about the fact that since when i installed Leopard both my batteries begun to lose health. Too quickly. Maybe this is model-related, but it is undeniable that a problem sussist...or both me and the other people reporting the same problem in the attached link i provided in the first post got into an amazing coincidence?
Click to expand...

Well we all have the same systems, we all have the same hardware (within reason).

What's different is usage between us all. Im down to 97/98% after 31 cycles and im planning to re-calibrate at 50 cycles.
 
I find that my MacBook runs exceedingly well as it can last for up to 12 hours at a time with one charge and running Leopard! And during the session of my MacBook I use the AirPort consistently aswell as MSN and LimeWire!

I just never seem to have any problems! I have how ever found that sometimes I can plug my laptop in when it is around 2% - 3% and it will charge in less then 20 min but as soon as u unplug it, it will drop from 100% down to 7% and I will get 5 min worth of Battery life! This used to happen about every second or third charge! But Apple fixed it with me over the phone and it is all good again!:D
 
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