new mac, low battery life.

[oneday890]

Hi.
I bought a macbook pro from NYC, apple store 2weeks ago.
And returned to my hometown, Istanbul (turkey).

My problem is;
After a full charge, battery shows at most 2:00 hours of life, where it has to be 7hours. What should i do? i'm not going back to nyc until september. and i'm not sure if i can change it here in istanbul.
if i can't change, what's this problem about, and what can i do about it?
or; can i change it if i should?


-Utility information-
charge remaining (mAh): 6287
full charge capacity (mAh): 6879
cycle count: 15
condition: normal


thank you verymuch.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

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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

Further reading:

Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
Making The Most of Activity Monitor
What Is Activity Monitor (or How to Take Your Mac's Pulse)​

______________________________________________________​

 

[bigjobby]

Sounds like you haven't calibrated your battery. The instructions should be in the manual otherwise there's a really good thread by GGJStudios (can't remember exact name) with quite a comprehensive guide somewhere in these forums. Will post location if I could find it.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Sounds like you haven't calibrated your battery. The instructions should be in the manual otherwise there's a really good thread by GGJStudios (can't remember exact name) with quite a comprehensive guide somewhere in these forums. Will post location if I could find it.

______________________________________________________
This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:
Apple Notebook Battery FAQ by GGJstudios
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[bigjobby]

That's the bunny! Nice one.

 

[snaky69]

Sounds like you haven't calibrated your battery. The instructions should be in the manual otherwise there's a really good thread by GGJStudios (can't remember exact name) with quite a comprehensive guide somewhere in these forums. Will post location if I could find it.

Calibrating the battery does nothing for increasing or decreasing your battery life. It only keeps the battery meter more accurate.

Your battery seems healthy OP, I suggest you check your usage and verify you don't have a runaway process eating CPU cycles. 7 hours is achievable, with very light use, but you should expect around 5 in real life usage.

 

[Philflow]

disabling Bluetooth, keyboard backlight and reducing screen brightness can help battery life.

 

[oneday890]

disabling Bluetooth, keyboard backlight and reducing screen brightness can help battery life.

i've disabled bluetooth, k.backlight and reduced screen brightness. still same.
what are other things i can disable and save energy?
thank you !

 

[simsaladimbamba]

i've disabled bluetooth, k.backlight and reduced screen brightness. still same.
what are other things i can disable and save energy?
thank you !

Have you taken that look at Activity Monitor yet?

 

[oneday890]

Sounds like you haven't calibrated your battery. The instructions should be in the manual otherwise there's a really good thread by GGJStudios (can't remember exact name) with quite a comprehensive guide somewhere in these forums. Will post location if I could find it.

thank you. i haven't heard of calibration before. but this thread tells that i should have done it in the first week i bought it. its been over 2 weeks, do you think its a problem?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

thank you. i haven't heard of calibration before. but this thread tells that i should have done it in the first week i bought it. its been over 2 weeks, do you think its a problem?

No problem doing it now. But again, it does not increase battery life, it does only help getting a more accurate battery time and health report.
Take a look at that FAQ I posted.

 

[oneday890]

______________________________________________________
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
Image
Further reading:

Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
Making The Most of Activity Monitor
What Is Activity Monitor (or How to Take Your Mac's Pulse)​

______________________________________________________​

 

[Philflow]

If you have some tabs open in Firefox with flash it can greatly reduce battery life.

 

[kevincredible]

If you're using a MacBook Pro with both integrated and discrete graphics cards, you can install gfxCardStatus to manually select your integrated GPU, which will help reduce power demands and give you more life on a battery charge.

It seems that running Flash in Firefox or running Google Chrome will lead to the discrete processor being activated and dramatically reducing battery life.