Please post your battery drain rate in sleep mode on new MBP

[lscangus]

I contacted applecare UK, and they dun have an answer for that

8 hours 20% is not a lot, mine lost much more. about 3-5% per hour

 

[blurb23]

That is the normal amount?

I had my MBP asleep from about 12AM last night to 10AM this morning, and I only lost 5% of my battery (96% to 91%).

 

[smokedog]

From 100% change, after 8 hours its down to 89%

 

[ninjamoby]

I've also experienced this issue, but the worst version.

From fully charged to 80% in twenty minutes!

I opened my computer from sleeping (in the sleeve) and it was running at 200+ degrees farenheit. My guess is the sleeve restricted airflow, but a 20% drain is still insane.

Late 2008 MBP 2.8ghz 4G RAM 320GB HD

 

[quotemeas]

if you read your manual, is says sleep mode is only to be used for short periods away from the machine. I don't think you are suppost to use it indefinately/ overnight. But anyway, DDR3 is suppose to be more energy efficient, not much of a performance gain. So I think it isn't the DDR3 that causes the battery drain.

DDR3 is suppose to achiever greater performance. But, current DDR3 specs maintain higher latencies then their DDR2 counterparts. I believe most desktop variants of DDR3 do require greater voltage then DDR2 which I would think would hold true on the laptop side of the house.

 

[jnette]

What is the benefit of putting it to sleep (besides saving your pages or work fro the next time you open the lid).. is it mere convenience?

I just shut down. That way I know I'm not losing any battery power. It's no big deal to me to jsut start up again later or the next day......

 

[Kaupa]

I just shut down. That way I know I'm not losing any battery power. It's no big deal to me to jsut start up again later or the next day......

Same here, no big deal and I dont risk a freeze by waking it up, which appears from time to time by opening the lid!

 

[MBPDiva]

II have the wifi enabled, but I have the bluetooth disabled. I genertally have mail, firefox 3 with 5-ish tabs, ichat, and sometimes itunes open.

I must be the only who thinks it's normal to lose battery power if all those apps are still running when you close the lid.

 

[mkrishnan]

Same here, no big deal and I dont risk a freeze by waking it up, which appears from time to time by opening the lid!

You shouldn't accept your computer locking up on waking from sleep in 2008... I mean, maybe one time out of every 200 wakes, but not any more frequently than that.

 

[MrMinor]

I must be the only who thinks it's normal to lose battery power if all those apps are still running when you close the lid.

I could be mistaken, but I believe the apps are no longer running when you close the lid.

 

[iMacDragon]

I'd personally guess that the larger power draw is the new nvidia chipset and integrated graphics, it probably uses up more power than the intel chipsets, and has to be kept powered to some extent at least for sleep mode I believe.

 

[mkrishnan]

I could be mistaken, but I believe the apps are no longer running when you close the lid.

You're not (unless the person in question specifically modified their Mac so it wouldn't sleep on lid close).

On suspend, the processor enters a power saving / stay alive mode (but does consume power), the display and drives are spun down, and most of the motherboard goes into power saving mode, too. The RAM is kept powered up (in hibernation, the RAM contents are saved to a disk image, and everything is turned off, essentially). But applications do not continue running.

 

[MrMinor]

What is the benefit of putting it to sleep (besides saving your pages or work fro the next time you open the lid).. is it mere convenience?

Yes it is more convenient. Waking up from sleeping takes a second and everything you had up when you put it to sleep is still up without having to re-open everything.

It is not a HUGE convenience, but it is a little bit more convenient than starting up fresh. If you are happy shutting down and restarting then there is no reason you have to change. There is nothing wrong (that I am aware of) with doing it that way as long as you are happy doing it.

I love putting mine to sleep instead of shutting down. I love opening the lid and being ready to use the computer that second instead of having to wait a minute or two for it to power up and then open Firefox and whatever else I want to use.

 

[iMacDragon]

Remember that's a higher latance in clock cycles, at a higher clock speed. The actual latency in time, not in clock rates, is about the same as the lower latency in clock cycles at slower clocked ram, or at least should be with proper implementation of chipset.

 

[sine-nomine]

This is something that seems to have come along with the Intel switch. My G3 iBook, even with it's old, worn-out battery could still sleep for a week and have almost half its power left. All three MacBooks in my family would have died within three days. I wish they'd do something about that - sleep was something that worked right.

 

[MBPDiva]

I could be mistaken, but I believe the apps are no longer running when you close the lid.

You're mistaken. They are still running in memory which uses a little power. Don't worry, I was a Mac newbie once too.

 

[MrMinor]

Don't worry, I was a Mac newbie once too.

I am more than happy to be a Mac newbie. It is better than being the PC pro that I was

 

[MBPDiva]

On suspend, the processor enters a power saving / stay alive mode (but does consume power), the display and drives are spun down, and most of the motherboard goes into power saving mode, too. The RAM is kept powered up (in hibernation, the RAM contents are saved to a disk image, and everything is turned off, essentially). But applications do not continue running.

Hence, you lose some battery charge.

 

[mkrishnan]

You're mistaken. They are still running in memory which uses a little power. Don't worry, I was a Mac newbie once too.

Erm, no. Running, to any tech savvy person I know, implies executing instructions... during sleep, the programs are present in memory, but they are not running.

EDIT: I don't think the issue is that anyone (or at least not many people) expect zero battery drain during sleep. The issue is that, several generations ago, an iBook or Powerbook G4 could be put to sleep with 100% battery on Friday morning, and woken up Monday or Tuesday the next week with 40% of its battery left. The drain on my iBook G4 was about 3% every ten hours. That's a big difference compared to what people have been reporting for Intel Macs....

FWIW, my current notebook is an Eee that uses and Intel processor, and its sleep drain rate stinks (even worse... but it's the Celeron one -- the Atom is I think more like what is being described for the MBP, though).

 

[MBPDiva]

EDIT: The issue is that, several generations ago, an iBook or Powerbook G4 could be put to sleep with 100% battery on Friday morning, and woken up Monday or Tuesday the next week with 40% of its battery left.

I think with today's bigger hard drives and more powerful CPUs, we should expect batteries to drain more.

 

[hari-bhari]

you guys are missing the point. the previous gen MBP from THIS year that i owned only drained a few percent over an entire day. ditto for my 2007 MB. both of these were intel machines, and the MBP even had a dedicated graphics card. the new MB has the same 9400M processor, and i just asked my friend today and he says his drains <5% overnight. So it's something about the new pros that makes them drain more in sleep mode even when they are on the integrated graphics. its obviously not the intel processor since the previous MBP and new and old MB did not do it, and i doubt it's the 9400M chip either. its not about comparing to something from a long time ago, its just that this feature used to be great and now it's not so much anymore.

as for the people putting it to sleep and taking it out later with it extremely hot and fans on full blast, its obvious why your battery is draining, because the laptop isnt really in sleep mode. something stopped it from entering sleep (obviously a glitch) so you need to try and reset your SMC and PRAM, and if that doesn't work take it to apple for an exchange or repair

 

[hari-bhari]

So here's the email I sent Steve Jobs a couple of days ago:

Hi Mr. Jobs,

I just purchased the new 15" Macbook Pro which is my 3rd Apple notebook (previously owned 07 MB and early 08 MBP) and I love it except this one major issue. The battery drain rate in sleep is 1.5-2% per hour meaning that we are losing about 15% overnight. My previous 2 notebooks lost only a few percent at most in the same time frame. If I put it to sleep with less than 5%, it inevitably goes into 'deep sleep' whereas my last two I could wake from sleep even if I had 1-2% left and the laptop was forced to sleep. There are several threads about this in the discussion forum (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8616269#8616269), so I know it's not a defective unit. The laptop is not exiting sleep mode on its own or heating up, its just simply draining a lot of battery power! I have applied the SMC and FW updates that were released on 12/10. I have a friend with a new MB and he does not seem to be experiencing the same issue. Please help! Thanks.


Today (Sunday) around 7pm I got a phone call from Apple Customer Relations asking if my issue had been resolved. I replied that it hadn't and this wasn't a defect with my unit, but a common issue. She looked into it and set up an appointment for me tomorrow to talk to the Engineering department so they can look into this and possibly get out a solution. I'll be providing whatever assistance or information they need, so I'll post an update later tomorrow evening.

Please note that this is NOT for those of you who's laptops are not entering sleep properly causing them to heat up and kill the battery. That issue should have been resolved with the SMC and firmware updates, and if it isn't then you should take your laptop in for an exchange.

What this phone call will be addressing is the consistent 1-2% per hour battery drain the MBP undergoes in sleep mode, which is much higher than any previous MB or MBP and even higher than the current unibody MBP.

 

[kobefan234]

My MacBook pro has about a 2% drain per min In sleep!

 

[Trivial rock]

Yes this is standard on the new MBPs it has been reported on many podcasts, it is unlikely to gain a fw fix because it is unlikely apple regard it as a problem.

I too put my late 08 MBP to sleep overnight instead of turning it off. It also drains roughly 8% overnight. This is pretty standard on these machines. I think we are going to have to live with it and work around it. O now tend to leave it sleep while charging, so I start the day with 100% batt (usually lasts me the day).

As a side note my gf owns a early 08 MBP that drains 3-4% in the same time period overnight which is the same as my old early 08 WhiteBook.

 

[Tex-Twil]

hari-bhari, let us know if you have some news. I also lose around 2-3% / hour in sleep mode with the late 08 MBP.