Mbp 2011 13" Battery Calibration?

[entilda]

I am sorry to start yet another threat about buying issues. I need a few educated opinions.

I bought the new mbp 13" yesterday. I went in for the i7 but, the sales person convinced me to get the i5.

I calibrated the battery as I have done with every new powerbook/macbook pro I had. I am hardly getting three hours from it. I just timed it, watching a movie it lasted about 130 minutes. So seven hours aggressive testing does not even come close to this. Do you guys think it might be a defective battery or something? This never happened before. i'm wondering if this is simply the battery life.

Also, if I go change this, should I change it with the higher end.

I am writing a dissertation, and the mpb is my lifeline. It's on 18-20 hours a day. It sleeps when I sleep, which is really not a lot of sleep/or shut down time. I do not play games or do graphics.

I usually have 20-30 pdfs open at once along with Word and several browser windows.

So I am wondering, if i5 vs. i7 makes a difference for a user like me. I really would appreciate any opinions.

cheers

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Have a look at Activity Monitor ( Applications / Utilities /) and select All Processes and sort by CPU to see what the culprit may be.

image below uses sorting by CPU as an example

 

[entilda]

Thanks. I did do that. Both when I was streaming the video, and when I shut down I all programs. Nothing seemed out of ordinary to my ignorant eyes.

 

[pricej636]

Thanks. I did do that. Both when I was streaming the video, and when I shut down I all programs. Nothing seemed out of ordinary to my ignorant eyes.

Might be a bad battery... I would be surprised if the battery life went down that much. I dont think apple would have gone that route.

 

[TomCondon]

It's the same battery as last year. so it should still last the same amount

bad battery perhaps


unless it was a HD movie? they can rape battery life

 

[entilda]

Thanks for your replies. No, not a HD movie. I also tried it without streaming any movies. Just internet and and word. It didn't even last four hours. I look at the activity monitor, nothing seems to be out of ordinary, but percentage display constantly changes as if it is trying to adjust. One minute, it shows three hours, the next one hour without any change in the running programs. So I think you guys are right about bad battery.

I'll go exchange it, while I am at it, any suggestions about the i5 vs. i7?

 

[wordoflife]

Thanks for your replies. No, not a HD movie. I also tried it without streaming any movies. Just internet and and word. It didn't even last four hours. I look at the activity monitor, nothing seems to be out of ordinary, but percentage display constantly changes as if it is trying to adjust. One minute, it shows three hours, the next one hour without any change in the running programs. So I think you guys are right about bad battery.

I'll go exchange it, while I am at it, any suggestions about the i5 vs. i7?

I'm surprised Apple lured you into the i5 instead of i7. It looks like they really do care and aren't simply trying to take more money from you. I'd stay with the i5.

 

[TomCondon]

Thanks for your replies. No, not a HD movie. I also tried it without streaming any movies. Just internet and and word. It didn't even last four hours. I look at the activity monitor, nothing seems to be out of ordinary, but percentage display constantly changes as if it is trying to adjust. One minute, it shows three hours, the next one hour without any change in the running programs. So I think you guys are right about bad battery.

I'll go exchange it, while I am at it, any suggestions about the i5 vs. i7?

I'm on the fence with this also.

 

[Crosbie]

Mine's showing very erratic figures. Until it settles down, here's what I'm chalking it up to:

- Restored from white MacBook (so a lot of disk and network usage)
- Time Machine backup running in BG
- Haven't calibrated the battery yet - and coming from MB might skew the estimates?

And funnily enough, Dropbox is using quite a lot of CPU...?

If it's not showing 6-7hr estimates on a full charge in a couple of days, I'll be making a Genius appointment.

Any other experiences?

 

[Hornzog]

I'm on the fence with this also.

The i5 benchmarks at about the same as the TOP OF THE LINE 15" macbook last gen, i'd really only suggest the i7 if you really do need it for heavily CPU intensive tasks on a daily basis.

 

[errorunknown]

What brightness did you have? The 7 hours is for half brightness and doing stuff like browsing text websites and word documents. If you are watching flash videos like youtube or watching movies on full brightness or almost full, don't expect more than 2.5 hours out of the laptop...

 

[entilda]

What brightness did you have? The 7 hours is for half brightness and doing stuff like browsing text websites and word documents. If you are watching flash videos like youtube or watching movies on full brightness or almost full, don't expect more than 2.5 hours out of the laptop...

Half brightness. No you tube. I've been on Google Scholar. a few pdfs, and Word 2011. but i realized the backlit is on. I will charge and time once again without the keyboard light and without any videos.

Thanks

 

[Crosbie]

What brightness did you have? The 7 hours is for half brightness and doing stuff like browsing text websites and word documents. If you are watching flash videos like youtube or watching movies on full brightness or almost full, don't expect more than 2.5 hours out of the laptop...

...using Safari with no Flash, I'd guess.

Mine is settling to a 6-7-hour estimate.

 

[DustinT]

I too use Dropbox, Word 2011 and some of the other apps you mentioned. I think what your seeing is just all the initial download of your dropbox data. Plus, if you are running a back up thats going to take some power too.

The i5 and i7 processors use a technology called 'turbo-boost' that will dramatically increase the performance of the processor under load and than dramatically lower it when the computer is idle. If you are pushing the computer you'll see the battery life go down.

I suspect once you allow all those background processes to finish you'll start to see some better battery life. If not, your are probably right to take it to the genius bar.