It doesn't take 1 notch, it easily achieves 10 hours + web browsing mail light youtube itunes etc. at 50% brightness as advertised.
I got 11:18 using 50% brightness.
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New MBP13" 10h Battery: Scam?
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It doesn't take 1 notch, it easily achieves 10 hours + web browsing mail light youtube itunes etc. at 50% brightness as advertised.
I got 11:18 using 50% brightness.
smelly cat
macrumors regular
Welcome to the wonderful world of Statistics, where anything can be possible if you use the right numbers!
Apple could have:
- Used a small sample size
- Used convenience sampling rather than random sampling
- Eliminated certain points of data that created skewness
... when they were testing battery life.
The list can go on and on.
How do you think the Tobacco companies got the public to think cigarettes didn't cause cancer for so many years?
The fact of the matter is - we don't know how they tested the battery life of MBPs, so we can't conclude that the advertised number is the exact number of hours.
Also, that advertised 10 hours won't occur on all models. That would be impossible. Maybe you have a dud, take it into the Apple store and see what they can do.
Apple could have:
- Used a small sample size
- Used convenience sampling rather than random sampling
- Eliminated certain points of data that created skewness
... when they were testing battery life.
The list can go on and on.
How do you think the Tobacco companies got the public to think cigarettes didn't cause cancer for so many years?
The fact of the matter is - we don't know how they tested the battery life of MBPs, so we can't conclude that the advertised number is the exact number of hours.
Also, that advertised 10 hours won't occur on all models. That would be impossible. Maybe you have a dud, take it into the Apple store and see what they can do.
Apple states exactly how they achieved those numbers and at what settings on their website.
I have noticed my percentage goes down fairly fast sometimes, but I have never ran it down to the point of the computer "dying."
Yesterday I was running on one brightness notch, and it estimated around 7 hours.
Right now, i'm doing the same thing, and its estimating around 11 hours.
Have you literally ran down the battery to the point of it shutting the computer down, or is the percentage just displaying faster rate than actual depletion.
In fact, sometimes the thing will have a low estimate of around 4-5 hours after about an hour of use, but then 30 minutes later you check again and it estimates 9. 😕
I dunno. Mine has stayed on long enough for me to do what I need to do during the day so far, so it doesn't really matter to me, but it just seems like the estimates/percentages are a little out of whack sometimes.
I might be completely wrong, but you know. hah.
EDIT: I just turned up the brightness to 50% and its still depleting the same speed! (slow, around 10hrs as advertised.)
who knows? heh.
Yesterday I was running on one brightness notch, and it estimated around 7 hours.
Right now, i'm doing the same thing, and its estimating around 11 hours.
Have you literally ran down the battery to the point of it shutting the computer down, or is the percentage just displaying faster rate than actual depletion.
In fact, sometimes the thing will have a low estimate of around 4-5 hours after about an hour of use, but then 30 minutes later you check again and it estimates 9. 😕
I dunno. Mine has stayed on long enough for me to do what I need to do during the day so far, so it doesn't really matter to me, but it just seems like the estimates/percentages are a little out of whack sometimes.
I might be completely wrong, but you know. hah.
EDIT: I just turned up the brightness to 50% and its still depleting the same speed! (slow, around 10hrs as advertised.)
who knows? heh.
^ i had same issues as you to estimated time so i completely charged my machine to 100% then completely ran it down to 2% battery.
and my usage was 11:18 actual usage not estimation.
and my usage was 11:18 actual usage not estimation.
I recommend everyone complaining of this problem does a clean install. I had this same issue and after a clean install my time skyrocketed. Seriously, if you want this most from your new computer. Back up your stuff or just wipe it clean and reinstall the OS and Applications.
It was recommended to me by MANY MANY MANY people in this very forum. I tried not to ask questions. Thankfully I had about a day's worth of programs installed and no substantive files, so I just wiped it clean and reinstalled everything (you save several gigs doing this as well if you deselect unneeded languages). Battery is awesome. I have no idea why.
interesting, I don't see how it will increase battery on a new computer either but It's worth a try I guess.. I can see how it will help an older one but who knows.. technology is weird these days
haha. yea I did a custom install of tiger on my old g4 and I got it all the way down to 2.5gb after I deselected everything I didn't want. it was great
cleric
macrumors 6502a
Is the battery really that much better? I'm in the same boat except the mem, hdd and probably the graphics are irrelevant to me.
Can you guys do actual test how long you can work on the battery instead of that battery meter in the top right corner. 🙂
Cloudsurfer
macrumors 65816
Last night, I had the battery indicator jump to 11:20 hrs 😀
in practice, I got about 8 hrs out of it a couple of days ago.
in practice, I got about 8 hrs out of it a couple of days ago.
Mine with just browsing online, no flash no keyboard light, less than 50% screen light lasts less than 4:30 hours...
If you got lucky, fine, but your experience doesn't define mine or every macbook pro...
js81
macrumors 65816
I've gotten more than 10 hours out of mine before... however, that was ONLY word processing and VERY LIGHT web usage. More realistic is 7-8 hours with brightness around 50-75%.
I love that I can take it to school with me (I'm a teacher) and it'll last all day. However, if you use Windows any, the battery life just sucks. I can barely get 4 hours in Windows (but I do use Vista - go figure, lol).
I also have the battery health issue - mine shows 94% with 8 cycles. I'm not happy about that at all, especially when my wife's 2+ year old white Macbook still shows 100% (and ironically enough shows more battery capacity than when new).
Honestly, the most annoying thing to me about my new MBP is that the percentage rarely goes to 100% before the green light comes on my magsafe. I've determined that it seems to happen more often whenever I've only use the battery a little bit (like 100% down to 95% or so) - if I use it down to 80% or less, it seems to always go back to 100%. Weird, I know...
But I DO get very good battery life altogether... very pleased. For example, right now my battery shows 71% and 7:22 remaining - just Macrumors (in Firefox) and Entourage open.
I love that I can take it to school with me (I'm a teacher) and it'll last all day. However, if you use Windows any, the battery life just sucks. I can barely get 4 hours in Windows (but I do use Vista - go figure, lol).
I also have the battery health issue - mine shows 94% with 8 cycles. I'm not happy about that at all, especially when my wife's 2+ year old white Macbook still shows 100% (and ironically enough shows more battery capacity than when new).
Honestly, the most annoying thing to me about my new MBP is that the percentage rarely goes to 100% before the green light comes on my magsafe. I've determined that it seems to happen more often whenever I've only use the battery a little bit (like 100% down to 95% or so) - if I use it down to 80% or less, it seems to always go back to 100%. Weird, I know...
But I DO get very good battery life altogether... very pleased. For example, right now my battery shows 71% and 7:22 remaining - just Macrumors (in Firefox) and Entourage open.
Apple states "The wireless productivity test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing various websites and editing text in a word processing document with display brightness set to 50%."
Based on that statement, we cannot be certain:
- What websites were browsed
- What plug-ins were used on the websites, if any
- The amount of mb's per website
- The length of the "word processing document"
- Types of media in the document
- etc.
For all we know they could have opened google and other low-intensity websites, and the document could have been half a page long.
They haven't given an EXACT experimental design.
The reason:
The MBP only charges when the percentage is under 95%.
Say if you were to charge to 100%, then use for 20 minutes or so till it gets down to 96%. If you plug it back in, the light on the magsafe would stay green, and not charge.
No, as long as you do the Standard Installaltion which is real simple, the version of iLife that came with your computer will install with the OS. It will be just like it was when you first bought it.
Now if you do a Custom Install, I'm pretty sure it will let you pick which individual programs from iLife you want or don't want to install..
If you're going to take the time to do a clean install.
I'd maybe suggest choosing the custom installation option because it lets you free up some hard drive space by taking out the stuff included with OSX that you'll never use..
For example; the language pack is a huge file that 95% of people will never use. A couple other things you can take out but I can't think of them off the top of my head b/c I did it so long ago.. It's pretty straight forward if you choose to install this way but it's not necessary.
Tom71
macrumors regular
If you have bad battery life, how about open up activity monitor and see what is going on.
If you see any applications drawing CPU then you know what the culprit is. Check (with istatpro) what your temperature sensors say and if the fans are running.
This can all be an indication of having tasks that run and consume CPU that you are unaware of.
Example:
One thing I've seen for instance is that Firefox always takes quite a bit of CPU regardless if it's doing anything - it's difficult to get below 5% cpu usage even if you close all tabs. So having firefox open already means that you will get less battery life than if you use Safari.
You can't simply compare and say "mine runs only 5 hours but his runs 10 hours" . It has to be seen a bit more scientifically than just shouting "my battery only lasts 3 hours, is it normal" - no it isn't.
Tom
If you see any applications drawing CPU then you know what the culprit is. Check (with istatpro) what your temperature sensors say and if the fans are running.
This can all be an indication of having tasks that run and consume CPU that you are unaware of.
Example:
One thing I've seen for instance is that Firefox always takes quite a bit of CPU regardless if it's doing anything - it's difficult to get below 5% cpu usage even if you close all tabs. So having firefox open already means that you will get less battery life than if you use Safari.
You can't simply compare and say "mine runs only 5 hours but his runs 10 hours" . It has to be seen a bit more scientifically than just shouting "my battery only lasts 3 hours, is it normal" - no it isn't.
Tom
10 hours is not possible for several reasons (flamesuit on)
1. You can't see anything from the glare if you work in a normally lit room. Is everyone working in a dungeon or something? So you must turn the brightness up to 75% at least. I truly believe that it's got to be bad for your eyes to be using the screen at 1 or 2 notches of brightness. It's literally a mirror.
2. There is a 63.5 watt-hour battery inside. Mac OS X may have good power management, but they're using the same components that pc makers are using with regards to power consumption. You're not going to get 10 hours of battery life. An x200s thinkpad has an 84 watt-hour battery and they barely even dare to claim 10 hours. And this thing has an ultra low voltage chip that sucks little juice. It's the size of the battery that trumps everything, people. Macs are still subject to the laws of physics.
3. Idling doesn't count. If you're leaving the computer on, going to cook dinner, and then come back and check your email, and then go take a shower, that's not how I'd count 10 hours of battery life. There's too much idle time.
4. The real answer is 5-5.5 hours of battery life. That's still excellent. But just don't expect 10. All you can say is that battery life improved from the last generation. I'd guess by about 30 minutes max.
1. You can't see anything from the glare if you work in a normally lit room. Is everyone working in a dungeon or something? So you must turn the brightness up to 75% at least. I truly believe that it's got to be bad for your eyes to be using the screen at 1 or 2 notches of brightness. It's literally a mirror.
2. There is a 63.5 watt-hour battery inside. Mac OS X may have good power management, but they're using the same components that pc makers are using with regards to power consumption. You're not going to get 10 hours of battery life. An x200s thinkpad has an 84 watt-hour battery and they barely even dare to claim 10 hours. And this thing has an ultra low voltage chip that sucks little juice. It's the size of the battery that trumps everything, people. Macs are still subject to the laws of physics.
3. Idling doesn't count. If you're leaving the computer on, going to cook dinner, and then come back and check your email, and then go take a shower, that's not how I'd count 10 hours of battery life. There's too much idle time.
4. The real answer is 5-5.5 hours of battery life. That's still excellent. But just don't expect 10. All you can say is that battery life improved from the last generation. I'd guess by about 30 minutes max.
Haha if I got lucky? You mean because my MacBook pro performs as advertised? I wouldn't call that getting lucky.
As for you MBP getting 4.5 hours... Maybe you got unlucky? Or bad karma? Maybe you should take your MBP back and get a new one because it is not performing as advertised. No need to get rude towards me for simply stating my experience with a product just because it was different from yours.
I have an ipod, but i know if you have the backlight on, that can drain the battery pretty quickly. also, if you're randomly shuffling songs and keep skipping forward, that can drain the battery too since the mp3 player needs to work harder (it has something to do with the hard drive).
Wow your an idiot.
1. You've obviously never used an MBP13 before. I'm typing this out in a well let room at 5 bars. My GF next to me is at 6 bars (out of 16). At 1 bar it isn't a mirror, although reflections are noticeable. At 5 bars they are gone.
2. Many have gotten 10 hours with the MBP13. Some have even got 11 hours. On my 2.26, I routinely get 5-7 hours.
3. No ****.
4. I'm getting better than your estimate and I'm not even on the 2.4.