Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

Csound1 wrote:

 

Sorry, missed your earlier posts, 8-9 hours is an excellent span, how is it now.

yeah those days were amazing

Now it's 4. It def. happened after upgrading to Lion. Now I'm a sad man

Your MBP is about the same age as one of mine, I got 4 to 5 on SL and on Lion I get 4 to 5 so ..... ?

Csound1 wrote:

 

Your MBP is about the same age as one of mine, I got 4 to 5 on SL and on Lion I get 4 to 5 so ..... ?

Yeah I have no idea. Fans are slow, computer is at 60 degrees. CPU usage at 10%. Battery at 85% health with 140 cycles. Everything seems fine. So I have no idea what Lion did to my machine after the update.

Likewise, I was getting well over 7 hours prior to Lion on my MBP (late 2010).  That was with wireless browsing (Safari, Firefox, Chrome running simultaneously), Adobe CS3 apps, mail, etc.  In other words, it didn't seem to matter what I was running.  It appears that there is now a common sentiment that certain apps are culprits of excessive battery consumption (non-Apple apps).  I find that hard to believe.

Further, Apple doesn't take battery life estimates lightly.  At this point, I think that Apple's 7 hour battery claims were a) conservative, and b) made with a lot of testing/verification.

milwaukee_bronze wrote:

 

I don't seem to have any issues switching between 10.7.2 and 10.6.3 (the version that shipped with the Mac)

 

I'm just about to apply the 10.6.7 combo and see what happens then.

Strange that.  So you just started up from your installation DVD as normal and installed it?

Like I said, I can't start up from anything prior to 10.6.8, the DVD that came with the machine, a retail SL DVD, an external drive with 10.6.7 - only from an external drive with 10.6.8.

majewskim wrote:

 

Csound1 wrote:

 

Your MBP is about the same age as one of mine, I got 4 to 5 on SL and on Lion I get 4 to 5 so ..... ?

 

Yeah I have no idea. Fans are slow, computer is at 60 degrees. CPU usage at 10%. Battery at 85% health with 140 cycles. Everything seems fine. So I have no idea what Lion did to my machine after the update.

My battery is at 84% after 212 cycles, guess the rate of decline varies.

Also to rule out 3rd party software I checked it out in Safe Mode - same thing, 4h.

Wierd...  currently, 10.6.7 installed and just waiting for battery to fully charge before I start the test.

I just held option on boot and selected the SL 10.6.3 DVD from the available boot devices.  configured as normal.

To get back to Lion, just reboot again and hold option, select the other partition and away we go.

majewskim wrote:

 

Also to rule out 3rd party software I checked it out in Safe Mode - same thing, 4h.

Do you mean 4 actual hours or a 4 hour estimate?

Csound1 wrote:

 

majewskim wrote:

 

Csound1 wrote:

 

Your MBP is about the same age as one of mine, I got 4 to 5 on SL and on Lion I get 4 to 5 so ..... ?

 

Yeah I have no idea. Fans are slow, computer is at 60 degrees. CPU usage at 10%. Battery at 85% health with 140 cycles. Everything seems fine. So I have no idea what Lion did to my machine after the update.

My battery is at 84% after 212 cycles, guess the rate of decline varies.

Just to add to this, according to coconutBattery, My battery is at 92% after 283 cycles.  I don't think this would have a significant baring on this situation unless your battery was down in the <60-70% area...

Csound1 wrote:

 

majewskim wrote:

 

Also to rule out 3rd party software I checked it out in Safe Mode - same thing, 4h.

Do you mean 4 actual hours or a 4 hour estimate?

Always actual

I don't trust those estimates

majewskim wrote:

 

Csound1 wrote:

 

majewskim wrote:

 

Also to rule out 3rd party software I checked it out in Safe Mode - same thing, 4h.

Do you mean 4 actual hours or a 4 hour estimate?

Always actual

I don't trust those estimates

Good, I never trust estimates, they always seem to favor the 'estimator'

Csound1 wrote:

 

I am not saying that battery life is not a problem for some Lion users, just saying that 7 hours is probably unrealistic (like gas mileage claims) somewhere between 5-6 would be more likely, I get 4-4.5 with a 1 year old battery, I got roughly the same before I upgraded to Lion.

So, if I understand you well, Apple just lied us when they advertised "up to seven hours". I find it hard to believe (after all, we are talking about Apple and not some Mickey Mouse company).

I am used to trust companies with big names - the battery life in my Nikon camera is pretty **** close to the estimates given by the manufacturer, no matter what I do. Same as the gas mileage in my car (of course, if I want to drive it with over 100 miles per hour is another story), but at 120 kmh (75mph) is right there where the manufacturer said it would  be.

Either way, some users here claimed they had a much better battery life before upgrading to Lion. Are they also unrealistic? Were they dreaming when they used their MBP for +6 hours, including wireless Internet and now they cannot get more than four hours?

I tend to believe that Apple just didn't test Lion well enough on MBP. I only hope that they would come up with an upgrade to solve this.

Just think: this forum is only the tip of the iceberg - how many users are out there, suffering from the same problem and did not post here, for various reasons - don't know English, don't know this forum exists, etc. I believe this is a serious problem and it cannot be minimez just by saying that we are having some urealistic expectations.

Loerincz wrote:

 

Csound1 wrote:

 

I am not saying that battery life is not a problem for some Lion users, just saying that 7 hours is probably unrealistic (like gas mileage claims) somewhere between 5-6 would be more likely, I get 4-4.5 with a 1 year old battery, I got roughly the same before I upgraded to Lion.

So, if I understand you well, Apple just lied us when they advertised "up to seven hours". I find it hard to believe (after all, we are talking about Apple and not some Mickey Mouse company).

Last time I checked 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are "Up to 7"

So you don't understand me well, at all.

Loerincz wrote:

 

Csound1 wrote:

 

I am not saying that battery life is not a problem for some Lion users, just saying that 7 hours is probably unrealistic (like gas mileage claims) somewhere between 5-6 would be more likely, I get 4-4.5 with a 1 year old battery, I got roughly the same before I upgraded to Lion.

So, if I understand you well, Apple just lied us when they advertised "up to seven hours". I find it hard to believe (after all, we are talking about Apple and not some Mickey Mouse company).

 

I am used to trust companies with big names - the battery life in my Nikon camera is pretty **** close to the estimates given by the manufacturer, no matter what I do. Same as the gas mileage in my car (of course, if I want to drive it with over 100 miles per hour is another story), but at 120 kmh (75mph) is right there where the manufacturer said it would  be.

 

Either way, some users here claimed they had a much better battery life before upgrading to Lion. Are they also unrealistic? Were they dreaming when they used their MBP for +6 hours, including wireless Internet and now they cannot get more than four hours?

 

I tend to believe that Apple just didn't test Lion well enough on MBP. I only hope that they would come up with an upgrade to solve this.

 

Just think: this forum is only the tip of the iceberg - how many users are out there, suffering from the same problem and did not post here, for various reasons - don't know English, don't know this forum exists, etc. I believe this is a serious problem and it cannot be minimez just by saying that we are having some urealistic expectations.

+1 my friend