The reason you get so poor battery life the first hours of your new MBP

[cluthz]

I've noticed quite a few are complaining about poor battery life on your new MBPs.
I just got mine, transferred data from my backup and fully charged the machine.

When i started using the machine on battery power it says 3:50..

I was thinking .. wtf 4 hours, that what i got on my Santa Rosa!!
I checked that TimeMachine wasn't running.

Then i opened terminal and ran top, and it all came to me.
mdworker is running at full blast.

mdworker is the app that rebuilds Spotlight indexes.
I'm pretty confident that once it has finished, i'll get a lot better battery life.

 

[Sneakz]

Isn't this already known? When you spotlight icon is flashing, its indexing. Its simply easier to always let it finish before doing anything on any Mac.

 

[Jwalker9]

doing a calibration significantly increased my battery life as well. The battery estimate shows almost up to 8 hours from 4-5.

 

[Hellhammer]

Sounds fair. You should anyway calibrate it for maximum battery life. To achieve the battery life Apple says, you should use apps that require almost no power (Pages, Adium) and brightness as low as possible.

No way you can get 10 hour battery life if you're using 100% of resources

 

[cluthz]

It's finished now and with safari only running it shows 7:46 left with 92% battery charge.