New Macbook giving me horrible battery

[sn00pie]

Purchased roughly 2-3 weeks ago. According to CocunotBattery i've had 9 cycles, and current battery capacity is 5029 mAh, original capacity = 5020 mAh. Right now its at 80% (4052 mAh) and it's telling me I have 2.04 hours of battery left.

Thats nowhere near the 4.5 hours I'm expected, and I've noticed its running way too hot. CPU A is running at 66 and the Airport Card is at 69, and its been idle for 20 minutes.. btw I bought 3 year AppleCare but I haven't registered it yet...

My brightness is on 20-30%, bluetooth off, wifi on.

 

[pjrobertson]

Funny you should say that. I was just going to post to say how my battery life seems to have shot up after the 10.5.5 update.

After the update I turned on my Mac and realised I had 6 hours battery life!

If you turn Airport off you'll get the 4 hours promised. Changing the brightness from full to ~20% doesn't really make that much difference, you have to turn it all the way off.

My battery has a full charge capacity of 5168mAh after 63 cycles. It sounds like you battery might be duff or you need to recalibrate. Have you done this recently; fully charged your Mac, run the battery all the way down till it turns off. Leave it for 3 hours, then fully charge it again.

See here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490

 

[TEG]

Take it to an Apple Store and have them look at it, it doesn't sound normal.

Then again, the battery life is with, brightness at +1, processor at Reduced Speed, Wi-Fi Off, and Hard Drive set to sleep.

TEG

 

[sn00pie]

I just updated to 10.5.5 now and it's saying 58% with 3:30 to go. But I doubt that is a realistic calculation. I'm actually timing it on my watch, so I will have a real number regarding the actual battery life.

I'm at 40% brightness, wifi on, BT is off, no usb devices connected, and the battery was "calibrated" yesterday when I used it from 100% all the way till it put it self to sleep, and I recharged it to 100% and now I'm doing this timing "test"

Edit: I don't understand what caused the CPU to get so high when I posted this thread. Maybe cause I had it sitting on my bed? Right now its on my desk and CPU A is at 41 (iStat Pro), compared to 66 at the time of posting this thread.

Good news is it's telling me 2:36 with 53% battery left. Maybe OS X was trying to confuse me into updating it?

 

[hogfaninga]

It is weird b/c each Macbook/battery does seem to act differently. I use 90% brightness(I don't see how you guys use 30-60%), wifi always on, and BT on(I have BT mouse. I get about 3-3 1/2 hours on my battery.

 

[*Sandy*]

My last macbook also bought almost a month ago, is getting much better batt. life then my previous MB