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Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

After upgrading to Lion, my MacBook Pro battery life has been severly affected. After 1.5 hours of light web browsing, my battery has decreased to 40% from 100% after charging all night.


Notes: Spotlight completed indexing the hard drive over night, and the laptop remained plugged in charging. The fans seem to be running normally, not at a higher rate. The backlight is at 50% brightness.


Thoughts?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7), 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB Ram

Posted on Jul 21, 2011 7:02 AM

Reply
2,644 replies

Aug 1, 2011 9:23 AM in response to anubis_

I tried to Archive and Install from my Snow Leopard disc and I got an error message saying I can't do it. I tried starting the computer off the disc, and I received a big bad kernel error (which forces you to hard reset the computer).


So looks like I'm stuck with Lion, though I'd be happy to roll back. That said, they likely will come out with a fix before Christmas.

Aug 1, 2011 12:51 PM in response to Pixelation

I am always amazed when I hear guys getting 10 hours on their laptops. I have never, in using Mac laptops from the very beginning, had anything over 3 hours. Ever. And it's just basic operations.


To get 7 hours, as advertised, would be amazing. So when I first used this new 17" the other day, and only got 3 hours, I was used to that. Only reading here do I realize that that's actually quite terrible for this "new and improved" Mac.


Indeed, hopefully a fix is forthcoming shortly.

Aug 1, 2011 1:02 PM in response to Pixelation

The sleep power consumption should depend only by the hardware. So, lion or not lion should be exactly the same.


On my MBP (2011) I'm getting 4 hours and 30 minutes with Lion. Sometimes more, sometimes less. The battery healt is 95% and my display is at 75% (someting like this). I don't know exactly how was before, but I have the sensation that I lost like 1 hour.


Just curious to know how many hours you get.

I have i7 2.7, and the most of the time I'm writing code on XCode, Coda, testing on localhost with Chrome and surfing the web.

Aug 1, 2011 1:51 PM in response to Michael Empric

Greetings,


This is the only issue I have had with Lion, on my Macbook. After the upgrade, I took the machine out on the patio, as I usually do, and the battery lasted less than 2 hours, and it was fully charged. I've seen this before on a machine that has had a lot of use, but this one hasn't


I immediately suspected the battery meter of being out of calibration, figuring something in the Lion battery indicator of not being true. The meter is what shuts your machine off - the battery could be half charged, still.


I performed a calibration by charging the machine up to full, and ran it down until it shut off, and wouldn't come back on. Just letting it discharge, with use, until it goes to sleep, until it won't restart, is enough. I did this twice, but usually once is enough.


Now the Macbook runs for nearly 4 1/2 hours with normal, and steady use. I've charged and discharged it several times since then, and it performs correctly, still.


Apple recommends to do this once a month, but I do it every other month, except this time, as I had just installed Lion, and that's when the issue raised its head. It's funny, it didn't affect my Macbook Pro, after the Lion update.


Here's an article from Apple about it;


http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490


Cheers,

M.

********

Aug 1, 2011 8:57 PM in response to Michael Empric

I took my sick Air into my Apple-certified repair shop (a lot better than the local Apple Store in terms of service) and turned it on. It powered down after 20 seconds. Then it rebooted. Then it powered down. Then it rebooted....


"Did you just install Lion?" the manager asked me as he wrote up my repair order.


"Yup," I replied, "but I think it's more a hardware problem."


"We'll see about that," he said as he swept the Air off he counter and handed it off to the young repair guru who's always fixed my machines since my G3.


Stay tuned.

Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

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