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MBP 15" i7 Battery Issues

A

atcorporate

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 22, 2007
7
0
Got my new MBP 15" with the i7 last weekend. It was beautiful and dandy for the first couple days then my battery was getting drained like no other. Checked to see if 330m was running but it wasn't and is on integrated.

Some numbers, it was showing up 3:00 100% battery (100% health) with wifi on, brightness 50% casual web-browsing. That seemed too low for a battery claiming 8-9 hrs (but I expected at least 5 in real life).

I didn't calibrate when I first bought it but then I did calibrate a couple nights ago. Battery was fine and showing 6 hrs battery life on the menubar. Dandy! It wasn't draining at a fast rate anymore.

A couple days later (today) the battery is acting up again, only lasting 3 hrs with 100% and casual use.

It seems ridiculous if I have to calibrate it every two days. Is this something I should take to Genius Bar?
 
Yeah the battery actually drains that fast and will shut off after the time remaining. :(

Going to recalibrate it tonight but I swear, hell is breaking loose if this is required every couple days.
 
i think it has to do with which gfx card is activated. Be wary of what apps you have running. I've seen my "estimated" battery life jump around like frogs when I close certain apps
 
ipponrg said:
i think it has to do with which gfx card is activated. Be wary of what apps you have running. I've seen my "estimated" battery life jump around like frogs when I close certain apps
Click to expand...

That's the thing. Only the integrated Intel gfx is on. :/
 
atcorporate said:
That's the thing. Only the integrated Intel gfx is on. :/
Click to expand...

Do you check every time you open up a new program, though? System profiler doesn't live-update, and the graphics card switching happens really quickly... in a snap.

While Windows 7 seems to give me uniformly low battery life, I have gotten as little as 1:30 to 2:00 in OS X thanks to activation of the GT 330, including unexpected times when I have multiple windows running video. When I'm doing just word processing, mail, and basic internet, I get about 6:00 to 7:30 in reality.
 
You sure it's not doing anything in the background? I get some background processes executed by the OS send CPU load to 100% on one core quite often.
 
atcorporate said:
Got my new MBP 15" with the i7 last weekend. It was beautiful and dandy for the first couple days then my battery was getting drained like no other. Checked to see if 330m was running but it wasn't and is on integrated.

Some numbers, it was showing up 3:00 100% battery (100% health) with wifi on, brightness 50% casual web-browsing. That seemed too low for a battery claiming 8-9 hrs (but I expected at least 5 in real life).

I didn't calibrate when I first bought it but then I did calibrate a couple nights ago. Battery was fine and showing 6 hrs battery life on the menubar. Dandy! It wasn't draining at a fast rate anymore.

A couple days later (today) the battery is acting up again, only lasting 3 hrs with 100% and casual use.

It seems ridiculous if I have to calibrate it every two days. Is this something I should take to Genius Bar?
Click to expand...


Same problem here. It seems like i use 1% of battery life every 1-3 min. Not good. Anyone have a solution? I called apple and I reset the PRAM and calibrated the battery. Didnt help. Am I entitled to a new battery? Any advice?:confused:
 
Here are some things that might help extend your battery life:

--Install gfxCardStatus ( http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/ ) to monitor which GPU is active in real-time. It also lets you manually switch back to the integrated GPU as needed. Stay with the integrated Intel GPU ("i" on the menu bar) as much as possible. Only let it switch to the discrete GPU ("n" on the menu bar) when you're running games or other graphically intense applications. Hopefully Apple will release an update with a better fix soon.

--Turn your keyboard backlight down as much as possible.

--Turn your screen brightness down as much as you can tolerate.

--Disable Bluetooth if you're not using it.
 
Ack said:
Here are some things that might help extend your battery life:

--Install gfxCardStatus ( http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/ ) to monitor which GPU is active in real-time. It also lets you manually switch back to the integrated GPU as needed. Stay with the integrated Intel GPU ("i" on the menu bar) as much as possible. Only let it switch to the discrete GPU ("n" on the menu bar) when you're running games or other graphically intense applications. Hopefully Apple will release an update with a better fix soon.

--Turn your keyboard backlight down as much as possible.

--Turn your screen brightness down as much as you can tolerate.

--Disable Bluetooth if you're not using it.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Already done all of those. I'm leaning towards thinking its a faulty battery. Hopefully they dont give me a hard time when I tell them it needs to be replaced
 
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