I own the newest (see my sig) macbook pro 17". i am doing nothing but web browsing with half brightness and no keyboard illumination and nothing else running with the 9400m graphic. i am only get 3 hours 25 minutes from a full charge
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Why is my battery not lasting 8 hours?
- Thread starter appleguy123
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Apple's estimates include using wifi, at least for all other models.
Take a look at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1446 , and http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1473 . Also use CoconutBattery to check your battery health, and look into System Profiler -> Power.
It gives you more info (exact battery capacity), but its estimates are very similar. What's your CPU usage?
You may need to calibrate your battery first. I would also make sure nothing is running the background (check your CPU usage). Also make sure that you are under "Better Battery Life" and not "Better Performance."
shift + cmd + 4, then hit spacebar and get a shot of a single window
.Your system is using up over 50% CPU. It's the problem. It can be spotlight indexing, or some process that needs to be killed. Go to Activity Monitor, select "All Processes" and see what's it. "mdworker" is spotlight indexing, if this is the problem it's just a matter of time until it's done.
Vm ware has the hight # im not using it but is it okay to kill it? and how do i do that?shift + cmd + 4, then hit spacebar and get a shot of a single window
Your system is using up over 50% CPU. It's the problem. It can be spotlight indexing, or some process that needs to be killed. Go to Activity Monitor, select "All Processes" and see what's it. "mdworker" is spotlight indexing, if this is the problem it's just a matter of time until it's done.
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Select a process and click the "Quit Process" button in upper left corner, then choose "Force Quit".
It's a third-party app so it should be okay to kill it. The worst thing that could happen anyway is having to restart.
Unless you're referring to something else Apple's estimates for 7 hours battery life do not include wireless.
Also to the OP, did you know that the widgets run full time once you launch Dashboard? They use up ram and CPU power even when they are not on screen.
"Up to 8 hours of wireless productivity"
"The wireless productivity test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing various websites and editing text in a word processing document with display brightness set to 50%."
Use Firefox 3.5 and install the Adblock Plus add-on. It will block out advertisements. Pages will load faster, you'll use less bandwidth and have more battery life. (and cooler lap)
It gives me an additional maybe 45 mins of browsing because many sites have flash based banner ads, and it's common for those to use up 30% of your cpu time as you are browsing the page. I'm really hoping with the introduction of HTML5 in Safari and Firefox, flash will die off soon.
It gives me an additional maybe 45 mins of browsing because many sites have flash based banner ads, and it's common for those to use up 30% of your cpu time as you are browsing the page. I'm really hoping with the introduction of HTML5 in Safari and Firefox, flash will die off soon.
I have a brand new MBP 17 3.06, 4 gb, 7200 rpm 500 gb hdd, and I got roughly 6 hours on the first charge with some browsing and installing.
I went through different brightness settings, so I couldn't say how long at I got a particular brightness.
However, today, I only got around 4 hours at max brightness.
I really can't use anything but max brightness or near max brightness during the day with all the other lighting around. Surfing at half-brightness last night was a pain.
When I turned the brightness down to 3 bars or so, it read that I had 8:50 minutes left.
max brightness hurts my eyes... and consequently gives me a migraine.
my battery ran for only 7 hours and 10 mins with 50% brightness, wifi, word, various websites (+ chat) but apple specifically states "up to" 8 hours
max brightness hurts my eyes... and consequently gives me a migraine.
my battery ran for only 7 hours and 10 mins with 50% brightness, wifi, word, various websites (+ chat) but apple specifically states "up to" 8 hours
Well, my battery never ran that long, but it estimated roughly 8 hours with the settings you described the first time I fired her up after calibrating.
Try the calibration and see what that does for you.
It is well known that all the computer manufacturers exaggerate the battery life on their computers. I think Apple is being picked on because they really seem to be advertising their new battery technology as something different.
Even though I didn't hit 8 hours, I was really impressed. I've never lasted longer than 2 hours on any laptop before this, so it was a really fun experience.
When I buy a laptop, i always expect poorer performance than they claim. I had an Acura MDX that claimed 17 mpg city, and it was more like 14 for normal driving. 17 and 8 hrs are the extremes where the machines are being babied around.
However, I think 3'25'' is really low. I will charge up, and unplug with VMware running to see what I can get.
Strangely, I got 20 minutes more the last time I fired up VMware. haha. I don't know why.
They don't exaggerate, they just use impractical testing methods and report the best-case result.