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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 18, 2011 7:13 AM in response to PRP_53

I was the one who posted that 10.7.1 solved the problem! It's been 24 hours since my post all I can say that we are going to wait more to see again our MBPs (if) having 5-7 hours battery life.


Since I opened the lid a few minutes ago after full charge my battery time was showing 3.30, 5.45 and now 2.30 h of battery time. All in 2-3 minutes. I'm running only Google Chrome with 3 tabs. 10.7.1 does not bring the fix!


Now all my PCs have better battery life than my MPB.

Aug 18, 2011 12:07 PM in response to Michael Empric

hi,


So like all of you i have this battery problem on my new MBP15 i7 bought in july.

I went to the apple store (montreal) to look for help . the mac genius there told me it was the first time he heard about that problem. When i told him there was a 30 pages long post on apple forums, he told me that millions of people bought lion and didn't have that problem. so if 1000 people complains on the forums, its not a big deal. 😀

Anyway he did an hardware check, everything was fine like i suspected. then he reinstalled lion from a clean install using one of their external HDD. He told me that might fix it because a fresh install doesnt have previous files and stuff from SL.

back home i checked after charging the battery full. the mac lasted exactly 2h40 until i got the warning popup.

And i was just browsing on chrome and listening to some music.


big fail, same as before !

Aug 18, 2011 1:23 PM in response to FastTJR

@FastTJR


No changes, I have feeing that it gets even funnier. Time readings are changing every 10 sec from 2.41 to 3.20 to 3.00 and all the time I am on the same page not changing anything.


I've seen this many times in the past with Microsoft and more recently with Google (Android). Apple will try to hush hush until the find a fix, typical corporate shyt. Questions is how long we are going to wait for ths to happen.


@doudoucorp

Apple store, don't waist your time. Those guys there are just to put the show for the public and to sell more and more.


Aug 18, 2011 1:33 PM in response to doudoucorp

It seems to be the basic attitude. We appear to be collateral damage.




doudoucorp wrote:


hi,


So like all of you i have this battery problem on my new MBP15 i7 bought in july.

I went to the apple store (montreal) to look for help . the mac genius there told me it was the first time he heard about that problem. When i told him there was a 30 pages long post on apple forums, he told me that millions of people bought lion and didn't have that problem. so if 1000 people complains on the forums, its not a big deal. 😀

Anyway he did an hardware check, everything was fine like i suspected. then he reinstalled lion from a clean install using one of their external HDD. He told me that might fix it because a fresh install doesnt have previous files and stuff from SL.

back home i checked after charging the battery full. the mac lasted exactly 2h40 until i got the warning popup.

And i was just browsing on chrome and listening to some music.


big fail, same as before !

Aug 18, 2011 9:08 PM in response to Michael Empric

Not sure yet exactly on how to quantify the actual benefit, but this seems to have resulted in my battery time going from 2.5 - 3.5 hours on full charge to adding what appears to be 2-3 hours... my meter is now fluctuating between 5 to 6 hours instead at a current 94% charge... and has been acting more like it did when I was running SL...


All I did was this:


  1. SMC Reset
  2. Installed http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus and set GPU to Integrated
  3. Installed Fan Control: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23137/fan-control (and set my Thresholds at 115 deg low, 165 deg high, and base 1500 RPM.)
  4. Disabled the Time Machine Mobile Backups via the terminal: MacBook-Pro:~ $ sudu tmutil disablelocal (Which Incedently gave me back more HD space)
  5. And rebooted...


I'd like to see if anyone else has any success with this, or is it my imagination playing tricks on me?

Aug 18, 2011 10:26 PM in response to Michael Empric

MacBook Pro 17" - i7 w/8GB - Spring 2010

MacBook Pro 17" - i7 w/8GB - Spring 2011

Hardware Overview:


Model Name: MacBook Pro

Model Identifier: MacBookPro8,3

Processor Name: Intel Core i7

Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 4


L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 6 MB

Memory: 8 GB

Boot ROM Version: MBP81.0047.B0E

SMC Version (system): 1.70f3

Serial Number (system): C02XXXXXXDF93

Hardware UUID: XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXF-XXXXXXXXXXXX

Sudden Motion Sensor:

State: Enabled

Hardware Overview:


Model Name: MacBook Pro

Model Identifier: MacBookPro6,1

Processor Name: Intel Core i7

Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 2

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 4 MB

Memory: 8 GB

Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s

Boot ROM Version: MBP61.0057.B0C

SMC Version (system): 1.57f16

Serial Number (system): C02XXXXXXC7C

Hardware UUID: XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXF-XXXXXXXXXXXX

Sudden Motion Sensor:

State: Enabled

Battery Information:


Model Information:

Serial Number: C0110730YKWDGKMAJ

Manufacturer: DP

Device Name: bq20z451

Pack Lot Code: 0

PCB Lot Code: 0

Firmware Version: 406

Hardware Revision: 1

Cell Revision: 1102

Charge Information:

Charge Remaining (mAh): 8173 <======

Fully Charged: Yes

Charging: No

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 8444 <======

Health Information:

Cycle Count: 9

Condition: Normal

Battery Installed: Yes

Amperage (mA): -1738

Voltage (mV): 12209

Battery Information:


Model Information:

Serial Number: 9G0100B17DN5A

Manufacturer: DP

Device Name: bq20z951

Pack Lot Code: 0

PCB Lot Code: 0

Firmware Version: 301

Hardware Revision: 1

Cell Revision: 119

Charge Information:

Charge Remaining (mAh): 13031 <======

Fully Charged: Yes

Charging: No

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 13031 <======

Health Information:

Cycle Count: 23

Condition: Normal

Battery Installed: Yes

Amperage (mA): 0

Voltage (mV): 8320


I am not sure if this cut and paste will work. If it does, take at look at the 2010 MBP battery charge (<=====) vs the 2011 MBP battery charge (<=====). Very interesting that the 2011 version's battery appears to hold less charge than the previous model. I might be mis-understanding this, but it seems like there is a problem here. Both systems are running OSX 10.7 (the new system is 10.7.1 while the older model if 10.7.2).


The new MBP shows a full charge capacity of 8,444 mAh while the older MBP shows its full charge capacity as 13,031 mAh!! That's a big difference even using the new math.


Look deeper and the Voltage numbers look totally different as well. It is probably only a coincidence but the Voltage numbers look sort of interesting as they could be considered within the number range of the other system's Capacity. Also note how the older MBP has a charge remaining that equals the full charge while the newer MBP has only 97% of the full charge remaining.


Of course there is always the case where these numbers are totally meaningly just to look good/interesting.

Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

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