new uMBP issues

[guitargoddsjm]

Hey everyone,

My i7 15" uMBP (4gb RAM, 500gb HDD, 330m w/ 512mb vram) was delivered last night to replace my black macbook. To save time, I ran migration assistant and everything seemed to transfer without a hitch within ~3hrs (except my 15gb windows xp parallels file).

ANYWAYS, I've noticed a few issues:

1. The battery does not seem to last anywhere CLOSE to 8-9hrs. Right now, the battery is at 86% and it says it has 4:17 remaining (this number has been varying wildly). My CPU is < 5%, Wifi is on, bluetooth is on, and I'm in auto-gfx-switching mode. Although wifi and bluetooth usually drain power, my Macbook gave me more battery life when I first used it. I do have iMovie open; however, it's been idle for hours...

2. My machine isn't running nearly as quickly as I thought it would, considering it's the top of the range MBP. The machine was seriously hanging when I opened up iMovie and when I tried to import some video clips (I was connected to power at that point). It's just not snappy like a new computer should be. It might be because of the migration; however, with the improved hardware (over the MB), shouldn't it be able to handle the extra load?

Other than these gripes, it's a beautiful, well-built machine (as is my iPhone 4)... I just hope it was worth going for this particular model.

 

[Reapur]

Migration is crap. Backup your important documents, music, photos, etc and format the machine do a fresh install and call it a day. My i7 is super fast no complaints everything loads up quick.

Whenever you buy a new computer format it. Do a fresh install of the OS and you should avoid problems.

As for battery life 8-9 hours is under IDEAL labratory conditions with screen brightness turned down to minimum with WIFI and Bluetooth OFF

Read the fine print sir.

 

[guitargoddsjm]

Migration is crap. Backup your important documents, music, photos, etc and format the machine do a fresh install and call it a day. My i7 is super fast no complaints everything loads up quick.

Whenever you buy a new computer format it. Do a fresh install of the OS and you should avoid problems.

As for battery life 8-9 hours is under IDEAL labratory conditions with screen brightness turned down to minimum with WIFI and Bluetooth OFF

Read the fine print sir.

I figured this would be the case. It's starting to speed up a bit (the original load-up of crap might have overwhelmed it), so I'll give it a couple days... but if it's still running slower than I'd like by this weekend, I'll start from scratch.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

It's not brightness down to minimum and WiFi and Bluetooth off. It's brightness halfway, WiFi on and Bluetooth off. Also, unless they've patched it otherwise, iMovie being idle but open will activate the auto-switching to use the 330M card. That might be the major cause of your battery drain. 8-9 hours is with the integrated card and the conditions I've laid out above. My 15" MacBook Pro gets 7 hours with the 9400M card, WiFi and Bluetooth both on and brightness at about halfway. I've actually written 5 papers, browsed the web, checked email, etc. I even watched a 1 hour short film my friend made. All on one battery charge. I still had like ~20% afterwards.

 

[microcolt]

Reapur is right, always do a fresh install. The migration might seem easy and quick compared to everything else but when it really comes down to it a fresh install is better. Plus you might be carrying something else over from the older MacBook that could possibly be slowing down the new MacBook Pro.

 

[spazma7ik]

Do you guys mean do a fresh install right when you get a brand new MBP? Or just don't use migration and transfer files over separately? Because isn't it pointless to do a fresh install if that's basically what was just done before packaging?

 

[andrew086]

As for battery life 8-9 hours is under IDEAL labratory conditions with screen brightness turned down to minimum with WIFI and Bluetooth OFF

Read the fine print sir.

no you

For the 13-inch MacBook Pro: testing conducted by Apple in March 2010 using preproduction 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo–based 13-inch MacBook Pro units. For the 15-inch MacBook Pro: testing conducted by Apple in March 2010 using preproduction 2.66GHz Intel Core i7–based 15-inch MacBook Pro units. For the 17-inch MacBook Pro: testing conducted by Apple in March 2010 using preproduction 2.53GHz Intel Core i5-based 17-inch MacBook Pro units. Battery life depends on configuration and use. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information. 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%.

 

[microcolt]

Do you guys mean do a fresh install right when you get a brand new MBP? Or just don't use migration and transfer files over separately? Because isn't it pointless to do a fresh install if that's basically what was just done before packaging?

When we say "fresh install" we mean if there was any OS on the hard drive previously then remove it and wipe it clean(aka format). As for the pre-installed OS that comes with your Mac at purchase, that would be considered a "fresh install."

 

[alphaod]

no you

Well I don't think anyone's been able to to get the advertised 8-9 hours.

 

[microcolt]

Well I don't think anyone's been able to to get the advertised 8-9 hours.

I can get 8 hours or more using my 15" MBP continuously hard wired to ethernet and low brightness, but that might be because I've got an SSD and I'm only browsing the web...

 

[elpmas]

I can get 8 hours or more using my 15" MBP continuously hard wired to ethernet and low brightness, but that might be because I've got an SSD and I'm only browsing the web...

Hahaha...I think this is the ideal setup to get the advertised hours

 

[guitargoddsjm]

So... I guess that leads me to another question. This is the first time I've ever had to transfer data between macs.

What would be the best way to go about transferring libraries (i.e., iTunes, Aperture, iPhoto, iMovie, etc) to maintain that data?

Also, could I just copy/paste my applications folder? Would this defeat this purpose? Would it even work? Or would I just be better off installing everything manually...

Thanks!

 

[agentphish]

I have never gotten more than 6 hours from my i5.

I have tried when at 1/2 brightness bluetooth is always off and wifi is always on, browsing the web on and off and doing email, nothing more intense than that. I also use GFXcardstatus to keep intel on and I still can't get any more than about 6

It's kinda sad.

 

[djasterix]

I transfered everything from my macbook to this MBP using migration assistant without a problem, it just worked great for me, and it took less than an hour to transfer 80Gb of files...