Snow Leopard and Battery Life

[pcb]

Hey everybody,

I am noticing a loss with regards to my battery life in my MBP after upgrading it to snow leopard. This is especially prevalent when the computer is asleep, which makes no sense to me.

A habit of mine is to put it to sleep on my desk with the screen open and to walk away, without it being plugged in. Under leopard i could do this and it would still be ticking away hours later. Now under Snow Leopard it drains that battery like I am using the computer heavily, it will only run for like a hour before telling me I need to plug it in.

It even does this with the lid closed.

This makes no sense to me. It is the same battery and the battery reads fine under about this mac.

Is anybody else experiencing this issue? Is there some setting I can change to get it back to the way it was?

This is a big issue for me as I am a student and am lugging this thing around with me all day long and need the battery to perform to its fullest.

Any tips and comments would be appreciated.

Thanks
pcb

 

[airplaneman]

Hmmm... it's not happening to me...

 

[pcb]

Hmmm... it's not happening to me...

well you are one lucky person, it really stinks.

I am in the process of recalibrating my battery but dont really expect that to help any.

 

[jpefjr]

After you put your Mac to sleep and then later wake it up do you see entries in the Console (Applications->Utilities->Console) with corresponding time codes for sleep and wake of the Mac?

 

[cluthz]

Did you do an upgrade install or a clean install?
If you did an upgrade, did you do a permission repair after?

 

[mrtravel123]

I have a similar problem.

I bought a new 13" unibody MBP yesterday. Of course, SL is already installed. I used Time Machine to bring over my settings, files, other programs, etc.

When I went to bed last night I closed my Mac's lid and had about 5 hours of battery life left (it said). I woke up 5 or 6 hours later and the battery life was down to 1 hour. I'm trying to figure this out. Others have expressed this issue in the forums but I haven't found a solution. I'll keep looking and call Apple soon. I never had this problem with my prior 13" unibody MB running with just Leopard.

I also noticed, although this could be normal, that the battery life estimator "jumped around" quite a bit before I went to bed. In short, that one minute it would say 5 hours remaining and then it would say 6 hours several minutes later. It would then go back to 5 hours. I thought that I was just imagining it at the time. Maybe it is normal. I just never noticed it on my prior MB.

 

[pcb]

After you put your Mac to sleep and then later wake it up do you see entries in the Console (Applications->Utilities->Console) with corresponding time codes for sleep and wake of the Mac?

I havent checked that but will be sure to next time I do this.


I did a upgrade to Snow leopard and have run a permissions repair. Didnt help but you never know so I will try that again.

Unfortunately my computer is way out of warranty so I will probably just deal with this issue as best I can. Like two full years out of warranty.

 

[mrtravel123]

I did some "light" troubleshooting yesterday and then called Apple.

Before calling them --
I repaired disk permissions.
I ran battery down to 0% and then charged for 5 hours while off.

Then --
Called Apple tech support.
There was not an instant answer as to what the problem is.
He had me reset the CMC.
He had me reset the PRAM.
He wanted to know the Mac's "full charge capacity" to check battery health.
(Mine over 5300... good)
He then wanted me to fully charge the MBP again and see how long it would last while in constant use. So far I'm at about 3.5 hours and down to 15% battery left after mostly internet use. But, I did have to put the computer to sleep for 6.5 hours, losing 6% battery life while it was asleep. (1% per hour, which I think some people say is normal).

Maybe the problem is solved - or not. Time will tell. He said that if it ends up being a hardware problem that I should get the MBP replaced from where I just bought it. But, we'll just troubleshoot things now. The battery seems to be in good health. But, I should cycle it a couple of times and see how long it lasts now, etc.

p.s. I don't remember the key combination for resetting CMC and PRAM. But, it was easy to do.