MBA: 1.5 hour battery life issues.

[rapps]

I've calibrated, shut off bluetooth, did cops reset, etc. and I'm not sure what else to do. I ran the useless smc update and now the fan is going nuts all the time.

With the screen on it's brightest and wifi on, I'm getting about 1.5 hours of battery life. I'm not a picky user, but this is really unacceptable. I'm flying tomorrow and honestly think I can watch a movie more comfortably with my iphone than with my MBA on 1/10th brightness. The odd thing is that system profiler is showing my battery capacity at 5000, yet I'm getting my worst battery time since I purchased the MBA. I've brought it into apple and since the capacity checks out alright, they claim nothing can be done.

Between the shuttering video, heat issues, poor battery length, poor battery charge times, I'm really getting a bit frustrated. Any advice?

 

[TBi]

Did you check that there wasn't some rogue process crashed in the back ground using all the CPU time?

A reinstall of the machine will probably be the easiest way to fix your problems.

 

[rapps]

Did you check that there wasn't some rogue process crashed in the back ground using all the CPU time?

A reinstall of the machine will probably be the easiest way to fix your problems.

Yeah...unfortunately there wasn't anything taking over.

 

[TBi]

I'd return it. If it's only 1.5 hour battery life you could bring it in to apple and stay there for an hour and a half. Ask them to get another model out. To compare them. There is no reason why they shouldn't both last the same time. If your's goes dead in 1.5 hours and the other one keeps going for 3 then you have a massive case.

I know it's a lot of time to waste though

 

[cohibadad]

Screen brightness seems to be the biggest variable in MBA battery life. I usually have mine on less than half which is fine and my battery lasts quite a while.

 

[BryanLyle]

I get a good 4 hours out of my battery doing normal browsing, etc... so I am happy with that. What I am not happy about is the fact that it still takes forever to recharge.

 

[Sesshi]

An exchange seems like the only option. I get reliably 3.5 hours in my usable power-saving mode and I can't really think of anything that would drastically drop battery life by such a large margin.