Temperature and Battery Life Question (MB pro)

[julipuli]

Hi,

I have a late 2008 15" macbook pro, 2.8ghz. Since I got it, it's been running fairly hot at times. It's summer right now and pretty warm here, but it's idling at about 67 degrees. I've seen it get a lot higher, up to around 85. Is this normal? Does it need a trip into the apple store?

My other problem is battery life. I'm only getting about 2.5 - 3.5 hours with the lower end video card, just using safari, and I don't know if that's normal or not. Any advice?

Thanks!

 

[designgeek]

Two things: How many cycles are on the battery? You can check by downloading an app called Coconut Battery (google it) or if you're using iStat. Also, I'm assuming those temps are Celsius, what are you running when it's "idling" mine is about 54º C and I have Safari, iTunes, Transmission and iCal running. If I'm transcoding video it's more like 100º+ but that's the down side of using a notebook to run HandBrake.

 

[julipuli]

Two things: How many cycles are on the battery? You can check by downloading an app called Coconut Battery (google it) or if you're using iStat. Also, I'm assuming those temps are Celsius, what are you running when it's "idling" mine is about 54º C and I have Safari, iTunes, Transmission and iCal running. If I'm transcoding video it's more like 100º+ but that's the down side of using a notebook to run HandBrake.

Yeah, those are celcius. It's at about 65C right now with safari and ichat open, but it gets a lot hotter when I'm playing games. I guess I'm just not sure what the threshold is, and what is TOO hot, especially since I've been reading a lot of posts that indicate that other MBP's run at a lower temperature. I'm not sure if something is wrong with mine, or if it's the ambient heat. It's probably about 90F outside, and maybe 80ish in here.

As for my battery, it says 222 cycles.

 

[designgeek]

IIRC Apple says the best our batteries can do is 5 hours on the 9400M and 4 on the 9600MGT. This is crap, I don't know where they get their data. I'm lucky to get four on the 9400M doing nothing, and I don't use the 9600 unless I'm plugged in. 222 is pretty young, mine still gets good life at 482. I wouldn't worry about it.

Games will always cause higher temps, you might try SMC Fan Control, it can increase the minimum fan speed to help keep your MBP cooler. A lot of people around here use it, but remember, it's not a toy. Don't just run your fans fast all the time, it decreases their lifetime.