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Level 1

35 points

Anyone experiencing low batter life on MBP after Lion

Hello,

I have just upgraded to Lion and my battery life on my MBP just got cut down in half. I have this problem with previous update and found out it was due to a conflict with parallels that caused it, when it previously happened the CPU usage was high but now it is not the case and CPU %idle is 85% or higher. Although the MBP seems a bit worrmer than usual.

I use the utility app from mac "Activity Monitor" to view the CPU usage.

If any has a solution kindly do tell.

Thank you,

Khal

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 20, 2011 3:00 PM

Best reply

a brody

Level 10

82,965 points

Posted on Jul 20, 2011 3:05 PM

http://www.apple.com/batteries/ explains how to optimize your battery life. Now don't forget, the battery life as indicated by the menubar is NOT an actual representation. Only by taking a stopwatch doing exactly the same tasks can you tell if the before and after are really different. At the start of running any new Apple releases since 10.4, Spotlight reindexes your hard drive. This can eat a lot of battery life initially. Once Spotlight menu no longer says it is indexing, that's when you need to start measuring things. Furthermore if you are using auto-save, or Time Machine, the background backing up can eat up battery life as well. So be sure you are comparing Apples to Apples when measuring your battery life.

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21 replies

jsueiro

Level 1

0 points

Jul 22, 2011 6:10 PM in response to KFAMAS

Same problem here. Early 2011 MBP 2.3GHz i5, 4GB RAM.

before upgrading to lion, 8 hours of battery. After upgrading to lion, I barely have 3 hours (100% battery charged).

Jul 22, 2011 6:17 PM in response to jsueiro

I'm sick of these people on apple forums with tons of posts and "points" who don't offer any solution or real insight. Newsflash - this may be a lion issue - but it almost certainly is a new macbook pro issue. This is complete and utter BS on Apple's part. This is a HUGE problem with 2011 Macbook Pro users and no one seems to have the answer -

see my post here - My battery and computer is pretty much brand new and I paid 2600 bucks for it. There's no reason why my battery should be this bad. The problem is - replacing it probably won't do anything as it seems there is SOMETHING going on with all these new Macbooks. Address it Apple, GGGRRRR!!!!!

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3200927

Jul 22, 2011 6:36 PM in response to jaredddddd

It is not just 2011 Macbook pro users.

I bought my macbook pro a week before the 2011 refresh came out, and my battery life has tanked.

Jul 23, 2011 12:54 AM in response to KFAMAS

This tip from another discussion thread seemed to work for me:

Re: Lion is draining battery twice as fast as snow leopard

Jul 22, 2011 1:39 PM (in response to Tony Corasaniti)

I just called Apple support and they talked me through resetting the power manager, the battery now seems to be fine. I can give you the steps the gentleman over the phone gave me, it might just help.

1. Turn off the computer.

2. Hold down Ctrl+Option+shift

3. While holding down these button, press and hold the power button as well.

4. Hold all buttons for at least ten seconds.

5. power back on the computer.

For me that worked, i don't know how it will work for everyone else but immediately my power estimation jumped up to around 9:30 and 10 hours. 🙂 Which is two hours more than i started with.

Jul 24, 2011 3:34 AM in response to Tony Corasaniti

2011 MBP about 6 months old, 13 inch with SSD. Battery life decreased more than 50% since LION update. Will have to remove LION if this is not fixed asap. Really the pits and it could not have been an unknown issue. Tried the three button reset mentioned above with out success.

a brody

Level 10

82,965 points

Jul 24, 2011 6:25 AM in response to davidfromspringfield

Interesting. The SMC & Power Manager were supposed to be the same on Intel Macs. But the SMC directions are different on:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964

And that's what Google digs up when you ask about resetting the power manager. I'm trying to get clarification from the knowledgebase authors. The directions provided in this thread had worked on old PowerPC based Powerbooks ages ago to reset the power.

Anyone experiencing low batter life on MBP after Lion