On a full charge at 99% while surfing on firefox using airport with the brightness turned down to the last light and the keypad light turned all the way down it says there's around 4 hours left and as of this typing im at 87% with 3:37 left. Ok this is no where near the battery life im expecting as a matter of fact this is an average battery life and a main reason why I bought the macbook pro was the "8 hours" of battery life. Is the time not consistent with the percentage or am i really running that low on battery life? What gives? Could it be that im splitting harddrives with boot camp? Im not running it right now but i have vista installed.
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macbook pro 17 getting around 4 hours on a full charge while using the internet? Why?
- Thread starter JJBro1
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The supposed "8 hour" battery life is just a marketing scam, really. Sure, the indicator will go up to 8 hours with 30% screen brightness, keyboard backlighting off, 9400M, BT disabled, no USB or firewire devices attached etc, but as soon as you actually start doing anything the estimate drops to 4-5 hours rapidly. 8 hours sounds great, but if you think about the fact that the battery in the 17" is effing gigantic and uses rectangular cells instead of round ones, it should have yielded something like 8 hours under normal use with normal settings and something crazy like 12-14 hours with extreme energy saver settings.
Also, the battery indicator in OS X kind of sucks. There are light years between update intervals and the numbers jump up and down like mad. The one in Windows is updated much more often and seems more accurate.
It will in fact achieve the full 8 hours but it depends on usage of course. Every Apple notebook I've had I have been able to achieve the battery life advertised but the only way it was possible was with the screen turned off, wireless off and no peripherals connected. Just listening to iTunes through the speakers or headphones would actually achieve the full amount.
I know it sucks but Apple doesn't advertise that the battery will go 8 hours at any settings while running any application.
I know it sucks but Apple doesn't advertise that the battery will go 8 hours at any settings while running any application.
Probably not a bad idea. I had two so-called runaway apps that were eating 40-45% CPU each on startup, one was "coreservicesd" and the other was just vaguely referred to as "System Services". The battery estimation was 2 hours 45 minutes on a full charge. The culprit turned out to be auto-mounting of my NAS drive. I've been trying to get this crude POS system to behave like Windows so that my NAS drive (where I keep all my media and work files) mounts automatically on startup, but A) this requires me to disable the Leopard firewall completely, and B) runaway CPU usage that won't stop until I kill coreservicesd or unmount/remount the NAS drive. I guess I'll go back to mounting manually like it was the 1990's. Without firewall, like it was the 1980's.
My june 2009 17" uMBP is getting about 5-6 hours of battery life sitting here at my desk all day long. I have wifi turned on, BT off, and the screen set thee notches up from off. I'm pretty happy with my battery life thus far.
Wow hearing this is kinda making me mad.. Why would apple dip that low? I mean i know its buissness, but apple is usually better than other companies, and they shouldnt have to lie about there battery life.
Thats like Chevy telling everyone there car gets 50 mpg on the road. But in tiny print it says if you only are traveling no faster then 20/mph you will achieve these rates. Really.
Thats like Chevy telling everyone there car gets 50 mpg on the road. But in tiny print it says if you only are traveling no faster then 20/mph you will achieve these rates. Really.
I had the same problem as most of you guys.... i have a 17 in MBP and i wasnt putting out 8 hours like they said it would so i called apple to complain and try to fix this problem. The lady on the phone said that i have to calibrate the battery every month to get those full 8 hours. This is total garbage considering that i myself have to do the work calibrating my own fraking battery. I mean, why cant they develop some kind of patch that does it for you? i didnt pay close to 3 G's for this laptop to have trouble with it. even now im running 95% with 5:14 hours left and im only typing this reply and surfing the web..... i hope apple does something about this crap.
Firefox eats cpu... try using safari I bet it lasts longer. Also it's well understood advertised battery times are not averages, they are maximums. Read the latest article on anandtech if you are interested in learning more about battery tests and usage.
I came here to post this. Firefox will drain the battery significantly faster then Safari. Switch browsers and you will see the difference.
A patch which unplugs your notebook for you? Right.
I'll bet if you're car didn't get the advertised MPG you'd complain that the manufacturer should develop a patch that does it for you, right?As for the poster that commented about fuel mileage... those tests are done by an independent tester. And yes, they use a particular testing methodology to get them. If you're driving is different from the test, you won't get identical results.
Yeah. Calibration has no effect on battery life, all it does is give you a more accurate reading.
No. No manufacturer can. It has to discharge the battery completely in order to know how much the battery can hold. No software could analyze that from the position of a full charge.
Sounds pretty normal. Then again the estimated time left is just guesswork. The only way to check what kind of time you really get is to clock it yourself, or use an uptime reading.
I have the late 2008 MPB 15, and I managed to get the advertised 5 hours of web surfing by turning off BT, and using the standard ambient light sensors (In a train) with one core turned off using Safari for various websites, all text and no video. The battery held 96% of the original capacity, according to CoconutBattery, and the lighting was fluorescent but dimmed (a KTX bullet train to Seoul) and one core was turned off with iTunes in the background. 5 hours. I was very happy.
That's true. I'm running 88% with 6:26 hours left. (though it showed 5:51 a few mins ago.)
I'm only browsing websites with display brightness set to 50% and iTune.