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MacBook battery nothing like 10 hours?

L

LucyP

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 9, 2011
10
0
Hi, I just bought a new MacBook....I know, I shudda waited but I couldn't!....it arrived this week and I love it!...but the power soon disappears when its on battery only, most times Im on mains power and today I noticed it would only charge to 99%, I left it whilst I was out and on battery only to test how long it would last, and, apart from network mail arriving, it had no use and the battery is now showing just 11% after 7 hours.

My question is how can it be the 10 hours that the May 2010 update claims to have given it? If I had been home and using it then it wouldn't even have lasted 7 hours?

Am I missing something?
 
LucyP said:
Am I missing something?
Click to expand...

10 hours under ideal/specific conditions. Also Apple now claims 7 hours for newer models because they adjusted the battery life measurement process to be more real life. So 7 hours is actually quite good and that's about what one should expect for very light use.
 
parapup said:
10 hours under ideal/specific conditions. Also Apple now claims 7 hours for newer models because they adjusted the battery life measurement process to be more real life. So 7 hours is actually quite good and that's about what one should expect for very light use.
Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to explain that. At least I know I don't have a duff one!
 
I just bought mine 2 weeks ago, and love it as well. The battery life tends to be around 4-6 hours the way I use it (lots of internet use, MKV and AVI video playback, itunes, word processing, and torrent downloads). I'm very pleased with that and can easily see how it can be more if you are doing a lot less with it. An average windows PC that rates at 4-5 hours battery life would probably only get 1-1.5 hours the way I use it!
 
battery life is said to be 10 hours with airport off, blue tooth off, and just doing simple word processing
 
LucyP said:
Hi, I just bought a new MacBook....I know, I shudda waited but I couldn't!....it arrived this week and I love it!...but the power soon disappears when its on battery only, most times Im on mains power and today I noticed it would only charge to 99%, I left it whilst I was out and on battery only to test how long it would last, and, apart from network mail arriving, it had no use and the battery is now showing just 11% after 7 hours.

My question is how can it be the 10 hours that the May 2010 update claims to have given it? If I had been home and using it then it wouldn't even have lasted 7 hours?

Am I missing something?
Click to expand...

I think 7 hours is long enough.. but when I first got my Macbook (around Nov '10); I did get around 10 hours. It all depends on how you use your computer.
 
LucyP said:
Hi, I just bought a new MacBook....I know, I shudda waited but I couldn't!....it arrived this week and I love it!...but the power soon disappears when its on battery only, most times Im on mains power and today I noticed it would only charge to 99%, I left it whilst I was out and on battery only to test how long it would last, and, apart from network mail arriving, it had no use and the battery is now showing just 11% after 7 hours.

My question is how can it be the 10 hours that the May 2010 update claims to have given it? If I had been home and using it then it wouldn't even have lasted 7 hours?

Am I missing something?
Click to expand...

make sure your screen brightness set to low ...
 
To get the best out of your battery life, from what I've seen, keeping the brighness low while (obviously) using less CPU intensive tasks is going to give you the best times. I have my battery meter in the menubar set to time which gives me a great estimate of how long I have to live.

When running small, minimal applications and the brightness around 50 percent or lower, I can get around 4 hours easy from the laptop. I'm using an old blackbook BTW with a lot of widgets and things like that.

However when I start watching video or doing other things the battery life will drop to around 2 hours which isn't really "good" but with the addition of a second battery I got for cheap, I'm not complaining.
 
Young Spade said:
I have my battery meter in the menubar set to time which gives me a great estimate of how long I have to live.
Click to expand...

Win.

On-topic: Download CoconutBattery and see if there's any significant amount of degradation in your maximum battery capacity.
 
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