Macbook Pro 13 inch mind 2010 battery life

i have a similar problem on mi 15", relating to battery drain. I think its the hd that is not resting when it should. Please, test it, see if in isle mode the hd stops to spin. If this is the problem, report it in the thread i´ve created

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2445037&messageID=11590559#115 90559

thanks

A Lithium-based battery needs regular light use, but not everyday heavy use, for optimal overall longevity. Read about it here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1764220

This User Tip is the best summary of useful information about notebook computer battery management that I have ever seen anywhere.

Spjen,

Another important factor to consider when gauging battery life is Flash. If you're doing anything Flash-enabled like Youtube, Hulu, etc., then you will see a drastic cut in battery life. By more than half in most cases.

When Apple claims a "10-hour battery life", they get those results by doing 'light' (not constantly opening and closing tabs) web browsing, excluding Flash, and running the screen a bit below the half-way mark for brightness.

I generally get 5-6 hours of battery life on my Mid-2009 MBP (with Flash completely blocked), and I'm content.

Hope this helps ya 🙂

I have the same problem. I have a 10 day old MacBookPro 13", and I am averaging 3.5 hrs of battery life. I just flew across the Pacific (which was exactly the scenario where I thought 10 hours would be great and kept the following stats:

Time - iStat OSX Remains Current Voltage

08:46 - 1:44 vs 0.45, 64%, 2400ma
09:08 - 1:34 vs 0.46, 78%, 1690ma 12292 mv
09:31 - 0.47 vs 0:25, 89%, 1588ma 12523 mv
09:46 - 0:39 vs 0:24 94% 936 ma 12541 mv
10:05 - 0:25 vs 0:20 97% 471 ma 12552 mv
10:58 - 0:00 vs 0:00 100% 265 ma, 12557mv
****** UNPLUG FROM MAINS **********
10:59 - 5:44 vs 5:44 100% -1015ma, 12318 mv
11:00 - 4:53 vs 4:52 100% - 1191 ma, 12221 mv
11:06 - 4:32 vs 4:31 97% - 1253ms, 12234 mv
11:42 - 3:44 vs 3:44 84% - 1295 ma, 11866 mv
11:58 - 3:18 vs 3:17 78% - 1383ma, 11734 mv
12:11 - 3:36 vs 3:36 73% - 1193ma, 11641 mv
12:19 - 2:33 vs 2:33 70% - 1612ma, 11561mv
12:28 - 1:41 vs 1:41 66% - 2478ma, 11312mv
12:45 - 2:29 vs 2:28 58% - 1316ma, 11329mv
12:54 - 2:21 vs 2:21 55% - 1363 ma 11293mv
13:07 - 2:07 vs 2:07 49% - 1373ma 11243mv
13:28 - 1:47 vs 1:47 42% - 1367ma 11131mv
13:37 - 1:18 vs 1:18 38% - 1701 ma, 11131mv
13:50 - 1:12 vs 1:12 33% - 1577ma, 11068mv
14:17 - 0:48 vs 0:47 21% - 1559 ma, 10816mv

Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 1199
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 5839
Health Information:
Cycle count: 9
Condition: Normal
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1285
Voltage (mV): 10986

Note that my iStat battery meter differs considerably on charging, but agrees on discharge.

Notes:

1) I have installed an SSD into this laptop (Crucial C300) and while the jury is out on whether they are net power savers or consumers that could could be dragging me down.
2) I have run a calibration cycle on this new machine and it made no difference.
3) I did copy my old hard disk over using Super Duper - not sure if there are any hidden files that could affect reported battery life.
4) I had exactly the same problem with my last laptop (2009 Unibody MBP 15") - about 3 hours of useful life, with the stock HD.
5) I have wandered round an Apple Store randomly pulling off the power cord and waiting for them to compute the remaining battery life, and even there with nothing happening they still only report 5-6 hours from fully charged.

Conclusions:

1) My capacity is apparently above rated target at 5835 mAh.
2) I am assuming they have a good current measurement.
3) I only only occasionally get my current (as shown by iStat or System Profiler) below 1000 ma.
4) As long as current draw remains above 1A (1000 ma) it is physically impossible for me to get more than about 5.5hrs life.

I would be interested to hear what current draw other users are getting. Perhaps my SSD is the culprit, or perhaps I have some other gremlin at work...

[Oh and to the idiots who go on about Flash, a) Yes I have click to flash and b) What matters is how active the CPU is - does not matter what is running provided CPU is in low single digits...]

I have increased the battery life of my 13 inches (standard HD) by doing the following:

- Configure Time Machine to avoid backup when on battery

And before going on travel I do the following:
- turn air port off
- turn bluetooh off
- set keyboard lighting to 0
- set screen brightness rather low

By doing this I managed to get close to the 10 hours battery life.

Hi socialnetworks,

I've never understood people who say, "Oh and to the idiots..." when seeking assistance or advice from a public forum community. Is there somewhere that negative comments directed to people inspire them to be helpful? Would you mind sharing where that is? All of my years of supporting Apple users has made me an equally bitter person and would like to move there.

Regarding the battery life issue, I have a near identical full charge capacity ~58xx and under normal usage I'm getting a little under 5 hours. This includes have Safari, Mail, iTunes, Adium and Pages open. Safari has maybe one or two tabs with no flash/Hulu/YouTube. I'm on WiFi with no Bluetooth and I'm running at about 45-50% backlight.

Out of all the information you provided, there was no mention as what you were doing on the machine during this time. Was it idle? What was running?

I've never understood people who say, "Oh and to the idiots..." when seeking assistance or advice from a public forum community. Is there somewhere that negative comments directed to people inspire them to be helpful? Would you mind sharing where that is? All of my years of supporting Apple users has made me an equally bitter person and would like to move there.

You are of course correct. I was not responding to that one post above specifically but had done extensive googling of the topic and have seen the response come up time after time as a sort of reflex reaction - now that Dear Leader has gone to war with Adobe (we) Apple faithful seem to have taken to pointing at Flash whenever anything bad happens, just as many used to chant "Repair Permissions" long after the original permissions issues had been fixed.

For the record, badly coded flash can be a huge CPU drain and so will chew up your battery life, if you spend too much time on certain web pages.

However I was on an aeroplane:

• WiFi off.
• Screen politely dimmed (maybe 25%?)

On the other hand I was programming in Visual Studio, so XP running under parallels plus the occasional burst of activity on a compile (programming being 95% typing is not as demanding on the computer as it sounds). Overall I believe my average CPU load to be below 15%.

The thing is I consider that to be normal work, a light load. When Apple promise a 10 hour battery life I am not seriously expecting 10, but I do expect 5 and hopefully more like 7. What I got was an initial 5:44 declining to less than 1:00 in 3 hours - say 3.5 hours life. 3.5 hours is what I had on my last laptop, the one before that and the one before that. This is not revolutionary life and I am more disappointed than I had expected I would be...

By contrast my iPad has gone for days without a charge, and perhaps has raised my expectations of what Apple can deliver.

Message was edited by: socialnetworks

Message was edited by: socialnetworks

socialnetworks: It might be informative and perhaps surprising for you to download and install Marcel Bresink's comprehensive Hardware Monitor utility, and display some of its History windows. They graph continuously the power and current draws and battery charge level (among many other factors) of your machine while you work.

I was having similar short battery life problems with my 1 week old mid-2010 macbook pro 13. In my particular situation, I took a pretty new WD 640gb HD (with a relatively fresh install of 10.6.3) that I had been using in my previous macbook, and put it in the new macbook pro. Light computer usage with wifi on, screen brightness ~30-50%, occasional keyboard backlighting use at 1-2, on-and off usage, computer set to never sleep, display sleep at 1min, yielded battery life in the 4.5-6hr range (Time machine off, HDAPM installed).

After reading a post somewhere suggesting that reinstalling the OS might help, I wondered if using an OS X installation from a prior computer was an issue. As a test, I swapped out 640gb HD and put back in the stock 250GB drive and started using the included install, and I got 8-9 hours with similar computer usage and settings. Although not definitive, to me this was enough evidence that using an OS X install from a prior computer, while still 10.6.3, might be the culprit.

So, I popped in the included 10.6.3 Mac OS X Install DVD and just installed over my current install on the WD 640gb drive, without erasing any data. I did first perform a full backup of my HD just in case. With similar computer usage, I'm getting in the 8-9 hour range. This simple solution seems to confirm that using a OSX install from a prior computer may be a problem.

2 notes:
First i'm using the "Watch It" utility, which is a stop watch, to time my battery life so that I dont have sit and watch my computer like a hawk. I keep it small and in the foreground in the corner. I unplug my computer (set to never go to sleep), start the stop watch, and use the computer normally until it goes into deep sleep. When I wake the computer, I look at the stopwatch time quickly, as it is frozen temporarily at the battery life, while the memory loads from the HD to RAM. You have to be quick though as this number is gone as soon as the computer is fully away, and the time jumps to the current time minus the stopwatch start time.

Second, I've tested battery life with HDAPM, a program that I wont get into describing as numerous other people have addressed it already elsewhere, but something I think everyone using a non-SSD drive should use with a mac laptop. Using HDAPM on MAX does not seem to significantly affect battery life. Every mac laptop i've tested (2007 white macbook, 2009 Al-macbook, 2009 13" macbook pro) has a load cycle problem, with or without the pinwheeling problem, with both stock drives and with the 3rd party drives.

Hi!

I have a problem with my two weeks MBP13" battery too; But it's quite different.

It's about battery health. Istat pro says that my battery health is at 94%; just 5414mAh in less than 10 cycles!!

Should I be worried? Should I ask for a change? Thx.

You should use your battery for a minimum of six or eight weeks before drawing any conclusions about whether or not it's aging prematurely. Apple is very unlikely to take any action with respect to a battery that's only a couple of weeks old and shows more than 90% health. If its health declines precipitously over the next 8 weeks, falls below 80%, or you see "Check battery" or "Replace Battery" in System Profiler > Power, that will be the time to take it in for testing and possible replacement.

hey, I reinstalled osx with the included disks, I know register like 3hrs of battery life (only safari open)- lol

It needs to be re-calibrated, o well... so what if your never going to get 10hrs out of this thing... 😟

I have seen 13hrs on the estimate table before- after i woke the computer from a pre-sleep
and i think one could get 10hrs with very conservative usage- still there doesnt yet appear to be a magic solution, come on apple i know os 10.7 will give as 20 hrs lol

as i said before, the time left in battery depends on config and programs running, its supposed to last up to 10 hours, but with the brightness in like 25%, and a very basic use, this includes not using too much flash, with wi-fi off it will be a lot easier to get this 10 hours, but still you have lots of things to consider.

One of the factors I was suspicious of was my use of a very fast SSD (Crucial C300) - initially it was assumed that SSD's would improve battery life, but some reports now say the opposite. I could not rule out my SSD as a factor in low battery life.

Crucial recently released a firmware update (002) said to reduce power consumption among other benefits - it was a destructive upgrade (formats the disk) which was a pain, but I bit the bullet and upgraded.

Then I did a full battery calibration cycle again - alarmingly from full to drained took under 4 hours with nothing at all running on the MBP... I ran only a timer program, turned off sleep and let it run itself down and it took less than 4 hours.

After calibration it will report between 4 and 6 hours remaining life, but I have learnt not to trust those estimates. I no longer believe the SSD is a factor because in running it down without using the computer the hard disk was rarely accessed.

Now I suspect kernel extensions that may be eating up CPU cycles - iStat reports about 6% CPU use even when idling. I plan to do a fresh OS install and compare.

Still so far I have yet to even approach the mythical 10 hour battery life, even if I do not actually use the computer at all.

I have the Macbook Pro 13" Spring 2010 too, and barely get four hours, even with the monitor turned down, the keyboard lights shut off, and barely doing any surfing whatsoever, so not sure where they claim to be getting ten hours on this system. My ASUS gets much better battery life then this, without all these adjustments, so if Apple is going to claim something, they should at least get close to their claims... 3.5 hours, compared to the claim of 10... BIG DIFFERENCE! My iPad does beautifully, my ASUS can get 8-10 easily, but this machine... barely four hours! And I have tried everything, so I am not sure if there is a problem with this battery or something else killing the battery life on this system...