Macbook pro (Early 2011) battery.

Having this battery problem all of a sudeen. I got my 15" MBP two days ago and the first cycle lasted several hours. Recharged and all of a sudden I got like 2+ plus hours, recharged to 75% and the battery life indicator said 1.5 hours left! All I had running was mail and safari (lots of windows/tabs open), X11 (but just a few xterms) and Word 2011 which had two docs open that I hadn't really done anyting with beyond just open. I exited Word and immediately the time indicator soared from about 1:20 to 3:11! And this seems about right; or at least the battery is draining half as slowly (based on percentage) as it was. Why would this be? I haven't seen Word have such an impact on battery performance on my old MacBook.

I am getting exactly the same problem, and looking forward to someone being able to address it!

I have had my 15" MBP i7 for about a week and am getting barely over 5 hours of batter life on a full charge - using Chrome, Word and brightness at 15-20%. I've tried using gfxCardStatus and I think it's helped slightly - is the problem with the battery due to Chrome using discrete graphics?

Is there some way to use Chrome without forcing the processor to engage integrated graphics? Youtube does not load at all on integrated, as someone else had already mentioned.

This is totally unacceptable, given how much money we're spending on new MPBs - surely someone from Apple can address the issue?

I want to add my name to list of people with far less battery life than advertised, or that is acceptable, or that I had on my previous Macbook pro!
I get less than 3 hours of very casual internet use... some of that 3 hours is "sleep" time, as well.
I've been using it for 4 days and I can't live with this battery life.
I should also mention that I checked Activity Monitor, and I've got nothing heavy running.
I've drained the battery and completely recharged it.
I've checked my power saver settings.
Nothing helps.

What browser are you using? I've done some more research and found that Chrome (amongst a tonne of other programs) engages discreet graphics, which churns through battery life.

I've been using gfxCardStatus, and have set it to only use integrated and battery life has definitely shot up. Chrome also seems to be working normally as well and now I'm getting ~7hours.

I'm using Safari exclusively... how about this,
Is it possible that everyone on this thread "set-up" their new macbook pro using Time Machine? Perhaps the old user from the previous mac is affecting the new Macbook Pro???

I am having problems also with the new 13.3" pro standard model.
The health of battery is 5720mAh (99%) according to iStat but after only an hour of use, webbrowsing, little mail and software update it is already down at 70% battery time left (or 3 hours).
How the ** can this be true? It is only 6 days old and 6 cycles.
I am using gfxCardstatus, not using chrome but safari or firefox, not keyboard light and 50% screen light and airport on.

This is my very first apple-product so I am of course very disappointed so far whats concerning the hardware stuff.

OK, so I haven't done anything to my mac, but the battery life seems to be improving... is this normal?

I have the exact same problem everyone is talking about, and I see someone else is mentioning this is a Google Chrome issue. I do love google chrome, but I would really like to see better battery life so Firefox it may be.

After calibrating properly, resetting SMC, everything - 4:14 is the time I have on a battery that says 95% remaining, 5 cycles, full charge capacity is 6864

I have the same problem! I get about two - three hours on a full charge, using nothing but chrome!
I didn't "set-up" my new MBP using Time Machine, but I did use a firewire cable to do that, so I'm guessing it's the same thing? That's a new theory that I haven't heard of while spending hours trying to solve this problem... But you can add me to the list!

GFX adds an hour or two SOMETIMES, but still well below the 7 hour mark..

I use gfxcardstatus and keep the gpu on integrated. With light web surfing using Safari and listening to i-Tunes with internal speakers I am getting 7 to 7.5 hours.

I am having the same problem with my MacBook Pro 15" i7. I brought it to the genius bar and they said it was fine. Is it possible this is something that could be fixed with a software update?

I was have the same issue. For myself I had an abandoned XCodeInstall running in the background at 100% CPU. I have had more issues with that $4.99 app than anything else in recent memory. Once I killed it my expected life at 100% has been climbing out of 2h to 5h.

Here is a checklist of things to go through:

• Bluetooth off
• Display sleep 2 minutes (before screen saver engages)
• Computer sleep 12 minutes
• use Safari instead of Chrome (i'll tell you why below)
• delete Flash plugin (security risk and battery hog)
• install Click to Flash Safari extension (even though you'll delete Flash, C2F will always give you the option, when possible, to play a video in H.264, which you will not necessarily get otherwise)
• wait to use Outlook until MS Office SP1 (should be out at the end of April): several issues with Outlook will be addressed, but overall I think there are several issues with Office that are eating batteries.
• only use chrome for Flash purposes

Most people using Chrome are having problems because it has Flash built in and its eating their batteries.

Here is the interesting part:
This is a link to a great bit of instruction on how to only use Chrome for Flash purposes: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/03/14/use-applescript-to-open-current-safari-url-in-goo gle-chrome/2#comments

Follow the instructions referring to comment #22.

I had some issues with battery life. Now I surf in Safari until I get a Flash site, I hit ctrlC (read the link for info about the shortcut) and Chrome (which has flash built in) opens to the page I'm on. When I'm done with the Flash, I close Chrome, return to Safari, and I still have great battery life. Right now, I'm looking at 3:36 on a month old MBP 13.3 after being used for several hours throughout the day.

Also consider installing the AdBlock Extension. I run that too. Fewer ads means more battery. Your mileage will vary, but all of these things put together helped me and may help you too, but there is always the possibility you got a dung battery. Good Luck!

i got a replacement unit in mid-late march. battery was so bad that I brought it back 10 days later thinking something had to be wrong. they gave me another new one. This one's battery is even worse.

i can put the top down and over the course of sleeping 6 hours i will wake up to find that 30% of the charge is gone when I open it the morning.

it will go from full charge to red line in 3 hours or less.

i thought i was getting an upgrade, but at this point i would gladly take my core 2 duo 2.66 ghz back.

I had the same problem on my macbook pro 15" that I bought yesterday but through this thread I figured out the problem. On a full charge I was getting 3.5hrs of battery life. As soon as I quit Google Chrome it jumped to 10hrs.

That ***** - I like chrome. Do you guys think this is a bug or is it just the way it will roll with Chrome in the future?