Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

DrChandra wrote:

 

Not "still" but "just started"! I was on SL 10.6.7 - Lion Upgrade - Fresh Lion .10.7.1 - SL 10.6.8 - Lion 10.7.2 and back to SL 10.6.6

 

I though you tried to upgrade at least to 10.6.7. Why don't you try to do that and see if it will keep same battery usage as under 10.6.6?

sebur wrote:

 

Hi guys,

 

my last entry here was a view months ago. I experienced the same battery drain. I reinstalled Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and had no battery issues at all. After following this thread for a while I decided to clean install Lion 10.7.2.

And it works for me. Last night I used my MacBook Pro early 2011 for 4 hours by surfing the web (not WiFi but 3G via USB!) for about 1 hour and thereafter watching iTunes video for 3 hours.

Afters these 4 hours my battery showed 48% charge left. That means about 7,5 hours of battery life estimated. So I am happy with that.

Please be more precise: do you claim that doing a clean install of Lion 10.7.2 (eventually burnig the installer on a dvd or using a thumb drive) will solve this issue? Or did you install from 10.6.8 using the "install Lion" app 10.7.2?

I burned the installer on a DVD, erased my HD by disk utility and installed Lion 10.7.2.

sebur wrote:

 

I burned the installer on a DVD, erased my HD by disk utility and installed Lion 10.7.2.

I don't see many big differences from my kind of install:

• clean install from thumb drive of 10.7.0;
• both upgrades 10.7.1 and 10.7.2 using the Combo updaters rather than using Software Update;
• other updates (firmwares, printer and scanner drivers, etc.) done using Software Update

Hey,

I just made an interesting observation which I want to share (don't know yet what to read out of it):

- I freshly booted the machine (17" MBP Mid2009 Lion 10.7.2)

- then closed all apps except firefox, temperatur monitor and coconutBattery

-> my estimated time went up to 6:00 at 90% (which is almost SL times)

Now comes the interesting part:

- start the mail app

- wait for the next change of battery time: goes to 3:30

- wait a little longer: goes back to something between 4-5 hours

What the **** is mail app doing?

After I first installed Lion I also noticed that when I sometimes interacted with Mail, hanging, crashing and strange keyboard behaviour would ensue – it even led to a couple of hard shutdowns.

My hunch: it comes down to Apple not yet properly figuring out how to make the new UI and 'performance' features play as nicely with the hardware as 10.6 did. I'd wager that if we were allowed to disable stuff like Mission Control and full-screen mode, we'd see better energy consumption. It must be incredibly taxing for the hardware to continuously manage everything that needs to happen for such sexiness to work.

It's been months and hundreds of posts on this issue here and over the WWW, and yet no one has definitively cracked this Lion issue. I hope Apple has by now figured out what the problem is and – most importantly – has a fix in the pipeline. At this point, I think they're the only ones who can properly sort this.

Just Got A Call At Home From Apple!!!

And Just Received This Email:

Victor,

Hello, my name is XXXXX and I am an advisor at Apple.  I would like to investigate your report of battery life issues, as I saw your post on our forums.  I was hoping to contact you and get some information regarding your use and the set up of the device. We look forward to hearing back from you, so if you could please respond with a time that would work best for you as well as a good contact phone number, and we will call you at the requested time.

Thank you,

Rayced wrote:

 

DrChandra wrote:

 

Not "still" but "just started"! I was on SL 10.6.7 - Lion Upgrade - Fresh Lion .10.7.1 - SL 10.6.8 - Lion 10.7.2 and back to SL 10.6.6

 

 

I though you tried to upgrade at least to 10.6.7. Why don't you try to do that and see if it will keep same battery usage as under 10.6.6?

It offers only update to 10.6.8

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1361

You can download 10.6.7 here.

vcarra,

Epic. Leave copious notes and details, please.

Will Do, They Scheduled A Call Tomorrow Becuase I'm At Work And I Left My Macpro At Home, So Tomorrow I'll Bring It In And They'll Call At 10AM. Finally! Some Action!

Just found this thread...

Can't confirm any of these problems!

Hi everyone. I've been following this thread for weeks... same problem, of course. I may have missed this, but is the terrible battery life problem also true for brand new macbook pros? I need to buy two for employees, and I will consider getting used with SL. I suspect the problem is the same, but no one seems to be complaining about brand new machines. Thanks.

I have also now been working with Apple since Tuesday afternoon when they contacted me. I have been sending a good number of diagnostics to engineering and running tests at their request for the last 3 nights.

Things are moving guys and they are taking this very seriously.

I spoke with a technician from Apple this afternoon. He took a couple of diagnostic reports and told me that they are working diligently to correct this situation.

Apple also issued an SMC update this afternoon. After installing it, it seems that I'm seeing longer battery time.

Fingers are crossed.