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Should my battery be losing power while in sleep mode?

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dpett006

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 4, 2008
17
0
Norfolk, VA
Like the title states, over the past couple of days my MBP (late 2008) has been losing battery power while it's in sleep mode. It has not been doing this previously, as I have had it for a little over 2 weeks. Is this normal? Also, no applications are running while in sleep.

Thanks.
 
You mean when it's not plugged in? It should use a little power in sleep mode, but not much. I take mine on weekend trips, without the adapter, and just put it to sleep when I'm not using it. Hardly loses any power.

But if you left it asleep and unplugged for, say, a week, then you should expect to lose some power.
 
there is a thread on this in apple discussions. seems to be draining battery a lot faster than the previous MBPs. hopefully its something a software fix can take care of.
 
The new MB / MBP listens for bluetooth connections while in sleep mode to turn off if say a keyboard connects to tell the computer to wake up. My MB (late 08) uses rougly 5% of the battery sleeping for a night. Which is quite normal i believe. That is with bluetooth turned off though
 
Thanks for the replies. My bluetooth is turned off, whenever I put it in sleep, I usually leave it unplugged unless it is not at full charge. An Apple employee told me that if I leave it plugged in all the time it would hurt the battery. So the only time it is plugged it is when Im using it, or if it is recharging after battery only use. Also, I'm seeing a loss of about 5% after leaving it in sleep for only about an hour or so. Like I said, this just started happening, so I don't understand what happened.

Any other ideas?
 
dpett006 said:
Thanks for the replies. My bluetooth is turned off, whenever I put it in sleep, I usually leave it unplugged unless it is not at full charge. An Apple employee told me that if I leave it plugged in all the time it would hurt the battery. So the only time it is plugged it is when Im using it, or if it is recharging after battery only use. Also, I'm seeing a loss of about 5% after leaving it in sleep for only about an hour or so. Like I said, this just started happening, so I don't understand what happened.

Any other ideas?
Click to expand...

I've always just left my laptops plugged in. I know it's not as good for the battery, but I'm happy to pay for a new battery after a couple years. It's more important to me to have the convenience of a fully-charged battery whenever I need it.

But 5 percent in an hour sounds like a serious problem. Are you sure it's really draining that much? Do you lose 40 percent if it's in sleep for 8 hours? If not, it might just be a battery calibration issue.
 
The percentage lost is according to my iStat. I have not left it in sleep and unplugged for much longer than an hour to two, but maybe I should try and test it out. If it continues to drain like this in sleep, does this warrant a trip to the Apple store and a possible battery replacement?
 
Have you calibrated the battery recently?
Draining it all the way - use it until it forces you to shutdown, then let it 'sleep' for 5 more hours until it fully discharges...leave it like that for a couple hours, then plug it in and don't use it for 5 hours.

Doing this once a month or every other month helps keep your battery healthy.
 
I guess I should have read the battery guide before asking. I will try the calibration and see what happens. Thanks for advice everybody.
 
I also noticed this issue on mine. I used my MBP in bed the other night and left it with about half a charge. I placed it on my nightstand and it went to sleep just like normal. When I woke up in the morning the battery was completely drained and I had to plug it in to get it to wake up.


Not good, considering my PowerBook hardly lost any juice when left in sleep for any amount of time.
 
dpett006 said:
I guess I should have read the battery guide before asking. I will try the calibration and see what happens. Thanks for advice everybody.
Click to expand...

I've callibrated mine when I first got it (about 2 weeks ago) and it is draining quite a bit while in sleep. I'm concerned as well. This battery life is really not impressing me and the sleep drain issue just makes it worse.

UMHurricanes34 said:
I also noticed this issue on mine. I used my MBP in bed the other night and left it with about half a charge. I placed it on my nightstand and it went to sleep just like normal. When I woke up in the morning the battery was completely drained and I had to plug it in to get it to wake up.

Not good, considering my PowerBook hardly lost any juice when left in sleep for any amount of time.
Click to expand...

Mine is not this severe, but is still much more than my wife's PowerBook which we've had for 3 years.
 
My MacBook Pro drains the battery very slightly when it is in sleep mode and unplugged... I usually have it sleeping between 12:30 AM and 9:30 AM and it might drain ~3%.
 
Mercellus said:
My MacBook Pro drains the battery very slightly when it is in sleep mode and unplugged... I usually have it sleeping between 12:30 AM and 9:30 AM and it might drain ~3%.
Click to expand...
I let my late 08 MBP sleep this night and it was 27% at 11.30am. This morning, at 7.30 am only 10% of battery ! This means 17/8=2.12% per hour ... is that normal ?

Thanks,
tex
 
akm3 said:
Have you calibrated the battery recently?
Draining it all the way - use it until it forces you to shutdown, then let it 'sleep' for 5 more hours until it fully discharges...leave it like that for a couple hours, then plug it in and don't use it for 5 hours.

Doing this once a month or every other month helps keep your battery healthy.
Click to expand...

I thought the manual said the new batteries dont need the 5 hours of sleep. Just drain all the way and then plug back in right away if you want.
 
Jatku said:
I thought the manual said the new batteries dont need the 5 hours of sleep. Just drain all the way and then plug back in right away if you want.
Click to expand...

When I calibrated mine, I let it die completely. Then I plugged it in (the only way to get the computer to turn back on). After which I left it alone until fully charged, with the power turned off. My iStat shows 100% battery health.

But....I still lose about 1% per hour during sleep. I'm guessing thats just the way it's going to be.
 
Im also experiencing the same issue. Just last night at was in the living room doing homework and the computer went to sleep mode for like 5 minutes, when I woke it up it had already lost 3% of battery? I think there is something wrong with theses batteries as many people are having the same issue with them.

The MPB is not even a week old...something must be wrong.

Since I got I have been charging it to 100% then I use it until it has like 10% of battery left then recharge it and do the same thing..I only plug it in to charge the battery.
 
Mercellus said:
My MacBook Pro drains the battery very slightly when it is in sleep mode and unplugged... I usually have it sleeping between 12:30 AM and 9:30 AM and it might drain ~3%.
Click to expand...

do you close all programs before going to sleep or turn off BT or wifi? mine like most other people is draining about 1% per hour. my old MBP drained at about your rate, but i don't know what is accounting for the higher drain now. are you sure you are only draining 3%?
 
i found this on the discussion board at apple.com, haven't tried it yet but i thought it could be useful. going to try it when i get home.

everything else i seem to have read seems to point towards the fact that this battery drainage while very annoying is actually normal...

but we have a choice! if you know how to tinker with the insides...


"The sleep mode on the newer MacBook is actually what is called "Standby to RAM". What it does is write the memory contents to a hibernate file and then supplies power to RAM to keep the memory state active. If the battery dies, since memory is saved to disk, it just loads the memory from disk.

If you want maximum sleep time, enable the old method of sleep which has a save to disk and power off. To do that do the following:

Open Terminal (Applications > Utility > Terminal

To enable hibernate type "sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1"

To enable sleep type "sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0"
Omit the " marks. You will find then that MBP will turn itself off completely but boot faster as it's only loading the hibernate file, not completely booting from scratch. "
 
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