WHOA! Where did my batery life go?

[klymr]

I just looked at the battery meter on my MBP, and it's saying I have 17 minutes left. I had it plugged in and fully charged until I left for class. I have been surfing the net and typing in Word, but that's stuff I do in class everyday. Usually around this time I have about an hour and a half of battery left. I've been using it for just over an hour right now. Could it be the fact that I downloaded a few podcasts and then closed iTunes? I wouldn't think that it'd drain that fast because of that. Is it supposed to show a negative amperage like that? Curious...

 

[kolax]

Have you calibrated your battery recently?

Charge the battery to 100% then let it discharge all the way until the laptop goes to deep sleep mode.

 

[klymr]

Have you calibrated your battery recently?

Charge the battery to 100% then let it discharge all the way until the laptop goes to deep sleep mode.

Calibrated it about a month ago. It shouldn't need to be done again so soon, should it? It was at 100% health and 100% charge when I left for class. Luckily class got out at about 8% left.

 

[kolax]

Well I'd recommend calibrating your battery once a month if you are using your laptop off battery mode a lot.

Every little helps.

 

[ultimateceej]

This may help depending on your particular battery. I have similar problems sometimes but unfortunately, I don't qualify for that plan.

 

[klymr]

This may help depending on your particular battery. I have similar problems sometimes but unfortunately, I don't qualify for that plan.

Yeah, I don't fit it either.

I have a 2.4ghz 17" high res. I've only had it about a month.

 

[vandlism]

Audio or video podcasts? If it's doing a lot of talking with Wi-Fi and read/writing to the hard drive, then yeah, you'll begin to drain your battery.

 

[klymr]

Audio or video podcasts? If it's doing a lot of talking with Wi-Fi and read/writing to the hard drive, then yeah, you'll begin to drain your battery.

They were all video podcasts. I only had iTunes open about 3 minutes. Would 3 minutes of DLing drain an extra hour off the battery?

 

[powz]

Have you tried installing the latest battery firmware update? If you continue having probs I'd definitely try contacting Applecare.

 

[klymr]

I haven't (or maybe I have). Is it something that was recently released? I checked the software updates yesterday and I'm all up to par.

 

[klymr]

I took a look at the battery stats again last night, and the amperage was down to about -3,500. When I first turned the computer on it was about 98% charged and showed I had 2 hours and 7 minutes of life. I moved those video podcasts from iTunes to my iPod and it drained from 98% to 94% (not that unusual) and the expected life dropped to about an hour and a half (again, might not be unexpected as I was just moving stuff causing a bit of load on the HDD). I'll check out everything when I get off work today and see what I can come up with.