Q: MacBook Pro Battery 'Service Battery' after Snow Upgrade

I'm having the same problem - erratic battery life since installing SL. Now battery monitor say Service Battery. Reset the SMC but to no avail. I haven't tried the plist file delete since others report it hasn't worked. C'mon Apple - give us a solution quickly - pleeeeezzze

Just a brief note: I'm now also getting funny fluctuations in Battery Health: It wobbled between 43% and 54% for a few days. Today, however, it suddenly jumped to 74%, but it still says "Service Battery". Anyone else having a similar experience?

Message was edited by: DaGaMs

Hi!
Same happens on my MBP 17´, version 3.1 (summer 2007).
Fresh install of Snow Leopard, fully charged battery and it just shuts off maybe 15 min after I unplug the powerchord. Will it be fixed in 10.6.2?

DaGaMs wrote:
Just a brief note: I'm now also getting funny fluctuations in Battery Health: It wobbled between 43% and 54% for a few days. Today, however, it suddenly jumped to 74%, but it still says "Service Battery". Anyone else having a similar experience?

Message was edited by: DaGaMs

Yup. My Battery Health had dropped to 6% and now it is back up to 84%. Service Battery has disappeared for the time being.

My battery life is terrible! I don't even know how it's possible for my battery health to be this low.

Model Information:
Manufacturer: Sony
Device name: ASMB012
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 0110
Hardware Revision: 0500
Cell Revision: 0303
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 903
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 1880
Health Information:
Cycle count: 98
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1858
Voltage (mV): 11436

I have 33% battery health... that's 1880mAh MAX out of a 5600mAh battery. I can't even take notes in college lectures now.

So I have a first gen MacBook Pro that has 2 batteries. Neither were great before the SL upgrage but I did get an hour or 2 out of each one. After the upgrade both "need replacment" and hold 0 min charge. The upgrade bricked both batteries ***?

I have a similar story.

A 40 month old MacBook. On its second battery (which is about 16 months old). I installed SL about a month ago. Before installing SL I was getting about 2 hours of battery life. Now I'm getting about 30 minutes! I followed the battery "calibration" instructions to no avail.

Same here,
Macbook Pro bought in March 2008 (no apple care).
Upgraded Ram earlier this year to 4gig.
Bought Snow Leopard Day 1.

Moved to Australia 2 months ago. Since then, it seems, my battery power has dropped every day. Came here with 90% of battery health. Have been noticing the "Service Battery" thing for a while but i didn't do much about it (other than one calibration).
Today i noticed this thread and i've read through a lot of it.
I tried:
resetting the SMC
resetting the PRAM
calibrating
startup in 64bit mode ...

nothing worked.

after the smc-reset i noticed that the battery health got up to 49% (which was previously 45%).

after that the battery lasted for 2:00 hours (at least that's what it said).
after booting in the 64bit mode the battery lasted for 1:00 hour again.

what's up with that?
i had 90% power and 3-4 hours of power ... now i'm down to 1 hour
i serviced it and took it out every time i was plugged in, did calibrations and so on.

the cycle count is 117.

Yup - add me to the list:

Model Information:
Manufacturer: Sony
Device name: ASMB012
Pack Lot Code: 0001
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 0110
Hardware Revision: 0500
Cell Revision: 0303
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 0
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 246
Health Information:
Cycle count: 98
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 0
Voltage (mV): 11770

This is getting ridiculous. I'm seeing new people reporting this same problem here everyday. I just turned my MBP on and it's reporting that the battery is NOT fully charged. Funny thing is, I haven't ran it without the power supply in a while. I have tried to contact Apple and they have not responded to me. I guess I have to drive out to a "genius" bar and get my free battery, maybe if they give away enough free batteries they'll address the real issue. 62 cycles... and service battery appears magically after the "upgrade"...

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Manufacturer: Sony
Device name: ASMB012
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 0110
Hardware Revision: 0500
Cell Revision: 0303
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 2736
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 3064
Health Information:
Cycle count: 62
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1657
Voltage (mV): 11884

CptMcHuggs wrote:

DaGaMs wrote:
Just a brief note: I'm now also getting funny fluctuations in Battery Health: It wobbled between 43% and 54% for a few days. Today, however, it suddenly jumped to 74%, but it still says "Service Battery". Anyone else having a similar experience?

Message was edited by: DaGaMs

Yup. My Battery Health had dropped to 6% and now it is back up to 84%. Service Battery has disappeared for the time being.

I forgot to mention that the battery health went back up to 84% and the Service Battery warning went away after taking out the battery and then putting it back in.

Shiggly - Problem is your going by the cycle count and the condition. There is a mathematical equation going on. There is Charge remaining, charge capacity, amps and voltage. I have seen batteries that are in a good charge state but the voltage was bad. Any of these can be a sign or give the condition of check battery.

The more I read and follow up on this discussion only shows issues with batteries and how 10.6 is better and mentioning or making the user aware of the issue. Again I wouldn't doubt if the Sony batteries are bad or if the SMU is bad, but not 10.6. Whats also weird is the device name ASMB012. Also take note:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=454162
This was also going back to 2008 when 10.6 was not in existence.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7386664
Again 2008
http://www.mac-help.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5801
Again 2008

Do some google searching. Its too bad Sony has the patent for the battery technology. Wish someone else can do a better job.

I don't see how ANYONE could argue that 10.6 is the problem. If I can run 10.5 and get 3+ hours of usable battery computing, but have 10.6 cut my battery computing time in half and shutdown my computer after 30 minutes with everything else being equal, the ONLY logical conclusion is that 10.6 has a bug.

How anyone would even attempt to argue against these facts and/or blame Sony is beyond MY comprehension (not that I don't believe Sony could produce a better product, they could).

I concur lapwolf. What's more, what does one have to gain by telling us we're all fools and the problem is in our heads? I'm convinced it's black hat denial/damage control. There's just no incentive for a normal user to so staunchly deny the problem and misdirect.
My MBP is practically new, as I've stated I only use it for music, and even then really only for live performance, I have a dedicated PC workstation in my studio and a PC laptop for surfing and business things. My room mate has a regular Macbook that's a year older than my MBP with at least 3-4 times as much use, and guess what, his battery lasts twice as long as mine, maybe if I can convince him to upgrade to SL the naysayers will cut it out with this "all your batteries are just bad, SL uses more power and is better at identifying bad batteries" nonsense. But he likes his battery life, I don't know if he'll "upgrade" just to prove that SL causes battery life to drop by 50% or more.

Shigglyboo, I installed Leopard on an 8Gb flash drive to do comparisons. When I boot from the flash drive I get the battery performance I expect, unlike when I boot SL from the hard drive, which drains the battery at twice the Leopard rate.

For now I would discourage anyone I like from "upgrading" a MacBook or MacBookPro to SL, the downside is too severe, versus the upside, and not worth the risk. Basic math...