MacBook 2011 i7 - not impressed - running hot/poor battery. Normal?

[adrian1480]

Pro tips:

1.) run in integrated graphics mode.

2.) Reboot apps like your web browser after switching to integrated. Something about these apps keeps the discrete GPU engaged even if you manually switch to integrated.

3.) Some apps drain the battery faster than others. I'd assume running a viral machine...which you know...runs a second OS on top of OS X is one such app. Duh.

4.) See #2. Especially #2. I'd personally recommend re-opening *any* app that's open when you want to switch to integrated graphics. just to be sure one of them doesn't keep using the discrete gpu.

 

[Lennyvalentin]

Running VMware Fusion 3 - and have outlook open and a word/excel doc from time to time.

On the Mac side - using firefox and have gmail open and this site (for example).

Am I interpreting you correctly in that you're running windows simultaneously together with OSX, using virtual machines?

If so, please be aware that windows is not able to take advantage of power saving features on a Macbook as well as OSX can. This could prevent your CPU from slipping into sleep mode when idle, falling back to low clocks and core voltage and so on. This would of course result in faster drain on your battery.

Do you have to run on battery btw? There's no possibility for you to plug in to the grid at your work location (which is what exactly if there's no electricity there, a swamp? )

 

[Young Spade]

Am I interpreting you correctly in that you're running windows simultaneously together with OSX, using virtual machines?

If so, please be aware that windows is not able to take advantage of power saving features on a Macbook as well as OSX can. This could prevent your CPU from slipping into sleep mode when idle, falling back to low clocks and core voltage and so on. This would of course result in faster drain on your battery.

Do you have to run on battery btw? There's no possibility for you to plug in to the grid at your work location (which is what exactly if there's no electricity there, a swamp? )

When running in Bootcamp I still get around 5-6 hours easy. I also get around the same time when running it in Parallels. I'm going to assume it's Lion.

 

[onions]

firefox has a memory management problem. it can be considered a leak but the allocated memory grows and grows to stupid levels. quitting and restarting can release the memory.

if you have vmware fusion running and allocating a lot of ram to it, it'll drain your battery faster.

this combined with the firefox issue can be part of the problem. i suspend windows in vmware and then quit when i'm on battery unless i absolutely need it. it definitely helps