Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

I'm having the same issue with a 2008 macbook - less than one hour of battery life after my upgrade.

Exact same issue here. Mid 2011 15" Macbok Pro. 

"Upgraded" to Lion about two weks ago. Actual battery life halved (cca 3h - basic browsing with backlight set to half) + My Macbook feels a lot warmer to touch than before the upgrade. Have gfxCardStatus (always using the integrated card) installed but battery/heat problem persists.

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ReDRuMxxx wrote:

 

Exact same issue here. Mid 2011 15" Macbok Pro. 

 

"Upgraded" to Lion about two weks ago. Actual battery life halved (cca 3h - basic browsing with backlight set to half) + My Macbook feels a lot warmer to touch than before the upgrade. Have gfxCardStatus (always using the integrated card) installed but battery/heat problem persists.

 

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"All power adapter and no battery, makes Jack a dull boy"

It's not widely discussed here, but the last few posts alluded to the issue. Heat almost always relates to the battery issue; if your unit is hot all the time, you'll notice declining battery.

That's kind of obvious, since high battery activities like gaming and video conversion also use up quite a bit of battery. But it has another relevance; keeping your MBP as cool as possible will increase battery life - both long and short term. This is not meant to solve the current MBP battery woes; but the management of activity can lead to longer run times.

If it's any consolation, the Sony Vaio - an aluminum beauty - gets 4:32 just web browsing, and 2:22 with power guzzling activities.

My Mid 2009 MBP does not exhibit the same excessive heat/increased fan speeds many users have described in this discussion, but I've still difenently noticed a 35-50% drop in battery performance since Snow Leopard while web browsing. At idle (Stting at desktop, no applications running, and display never sleeping) I can still acheive SL's idle battery life.

How many people are experienceing poor battery life, but still have normal hardware operation, ie normal temp, fan speed, CPU usage, using the proper (or only) graphics card? Also, do you notice that battery life estimates can change drastically just by visiting different web sites or closing/opening apps such as Safari, Preview, etc.?

Hi  - yes my MBP 2011, Lion Pre-installed doesn't seem to have any problem with heat, yet still loses battery faster than it should (see my posts earlier in this topic).

As mentioned, the biggest deal for me at the moment is that when it is sleeping it is losing upwards of 2% battery per hour - nothing showing in the logs to be running whilst sleeping either - jut can't figure this out.

Actually, I spoke to Apple today (at their request) and they have logs from my MBP now and asked lots of very good questions and passed these onto their engineers - this is good.

If I hear back (I may or may not - depending on what is found by the engineers) I will let the forum know.

in the meantime it's always shut down (if I remember!) when leaving it for more than a few minutes - not great, but helps and keep power supply with me at all times - again not great and not always possible to plug in.

I am holding back on trying to reverse engineer to Snow Leopard for now, but that will be my last resort - one I am not at all looking forward too (is it even possible?) but will need to do if this doesn't get resolved in the near future.

You may not believe this, but I just got off the phone with an Apple engineer who called me based on this thread! Asked a bunch of questions, ran some reports, and said they are on this. So, despair not, they may fix it yet.

Can you tell us what your situation is? Are you seeing excessive CPU usage or just power draw?

I've got a few posts way back on the discussion, but battery life is gone to heck. I'll see a significant (10-12%) decrease in battery power just over night with the machine asleep.

I think in this case the heat is the sympton, not the cause. I think what most people have is one of two scenarios:

1. Background process causing excessive CPU usage

2. CPU draws a lot of power (>40W) for no apparent reason (load average <0.5)

The discrete graphics chip has a limited influence on battery life (4 vs 6 hours in my experience), but if the battery life is down to a couple of hours or less, then it's probably the CPU.

So who are you for an Apple engineer to call you based on a thread you didn't even leave any comment in, as far as I can see?

(And with an iMac G5 listed in your profile as well)

PS Ok, found it, it's just not listed under your recent activities.  Page 20 August - had to look by hand.  Sorry.

In response to Video Guy's post, here are the details of my issue:

I have a mid-2010 MacBook Pro. Was consistently getting 5+ hours on a fully charged battery. Now get about 2.5 maximum immediately post-Lion upgrade.

I don't experience the excessive heat issue and my fans aren't running at excessive speeds. However, my fans never rest and always operate at least on their low level if the computer is on. They  rev up to high during use when it would be expected (video playing, etc.).  But they used to shut off when computer wasn't in use or was only running a single program, etc. Now they're always running on low if the computer is on.

My overall use is very basic. I use Outlook, Word and Firefox. That's it. 2.5 hours...maybe 3 if I'm really lucky. If I use more than those three programs (e.g. turn on iTunes), I might get 1.5 hours tops.  Used to get 5-7 hours consistently even with my usual three apps plus iTunes or other apps running.

The last senior advisor I spoke with told me that this is likely just the new normal and that I might try turning off Wifi when I'm not using it. I tried explaining that when 2/3 of your use is Outlook and Firefox, turning off wifi is not a reasonable or practical solution on a machine that should be getting 5-7 hours on battery.

Glad Apple is paying attention. I know they have my number. They're welcome to use it. 

I don't know who I am to have them call me though. It's made my week.

I'm such a dork.

My iMac G5 started on fire, so I should remove that from my profile.

John Larson wrote:

I'm such a dork.

Not you, me; sorry about that.  I just missed your earlier post and couldn't make sense out of why they would call you.

Having same problems as detailed in numerous posts above.  I have a 2011 13" MacBook Pro and I never get more than about 3.5 hours of battery life since upgrading to Lion.  This is using basic applications (Office, Firefox, email) If I reset the power controller, it will show 7+ hours of battery life, but this resets down to about 3 hour of battery life after about 30 minutes of use.