Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

Csound1 wrote:

 

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

 

So don't understand me well, at all.

If you are so happy with your MBP battery life, why are you still posting here?

OK my friend, the smartest gives up first: you are right and the rest of us are wrong!

Have a nice life!

Loerincz wrote:

 

Csound1 wrote:

 

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

 

So don't understand me well, at all.

If you are so happy with your MBP battery life, why are you still posting here?

 

OK my friend, the smartest gives up first: you are right and the rest of us are wrong!

Have a nice life!

You really haven't bothered to read my posts have you, I have not said that nothing is wrong, merely pointed out that Apple are not promising 7 hours of life, up to 7 depending on useage is the promise, I get 4, but my battery is not new, and I got 4 with SL so nothing has changed. What was yours (not estimated but actual) before and after the Lion upgrade?

Csound1 wrote:

 

I rarely spend 7 hours browsing but I use my Mac to remotely access different servers all day long, I get 4 to 5 hours consistently, my battery is a year old (reports as 84% health) and has 212 cycles on it.

Well my laptop has 97% of battery health and I get 4:30 hrs of usage when just browsing and having Mail.app opened in background.

Before, with SL, I was getting around 6 hrs of battery life. That's it. No worries about which GPU was being used and so on.

Hi everyone. I've posted a little before, about how my battery life went from 4 to 2 hours on my late 2010 MBP the moment I installed Lion. And I understand that until Apple resolves this, not much about the content of what we post will matter, but the fact that we keep posting is essential.

However, I noticed something today. I unplugged my laptop to see real battery life again. I wish I had been much more scientific and discplined and done some testing over the last few weeks.

What I noticed is that for the first time since I loaded Lion, most of my time spent was not using firefox or the web (I don't watch many videos, I do browse a lot). What I did today was use word processing, email, excel, and calendar. And my battery lasted 5 hours (this is on a battery that is at 90% capacity.

So it simply suggested made me wonder whether the lion battery drain problem has to to with internet/airport access. Perhaps someone has already tested this. I had tried many of the suggested fixes over the last few weeks (GfsCard Status using integrated graphics, disabling flash on firefox, resetting the smc.) None of that made a difference. But with little use of my network, my life has shot up.

I admit this has nothing to do with the battery draining while in standby mode. But perhaps that is unrelated?

What's your hardware then?  Doesn't work on a MacBook Pro (early 2011) that came with SL but had all the updates to Lion (including efi).

@Redarm, 15" MBP mid-2010. Stock except uprated screen.

I assume I have the updated EFI but would not know how to verify this.  I got this from profiler:  

Boot ROM Version:    MBP61.0057.B0C

SMC Version (system):    1.58f16

OK, I confirmed for myself here:  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237

Looks like I have the right version but your newer Mac has a totally different EFI to mine.  2.3 vs. 1.9 perhaps this is the cause?

Yes, looks like I will have to either live with Lion, or dual boot to SL 10.6.8 (clone), or go back to SL alltoghether.

Edit: lucky you for having an older model.

Do you want to know why MBP battery life under Lion is so disappointing? Read on.

1. SL: 10.6.0 to 10.6.6. With Snow Leopard, the battery life was, for many, stable and relatively long lasting. One could use Safari for about seven hours, no problem.

2. SL 10.6.8 and Lion. With the 10.6.8 upgrade and Lion, things changed. Using Safari might leave you with a battery of around three to five hours, depending on screen brightness. But why the decline in battery life? In April and May '11, Apple released several firmware upgrades. Just after the firmware updates, the latest set of battery problems started happening.

In all likelihood, the upgrades were in preparation for the power-hungry Lion, which uses a variety of full-screen applications and the iOS Mission Control. Lion was released in July.

In short, 10.6.8 and related firmware upgrades increased energy requirements, but also decreased MBP battery life as a result. 

What Apple intends to do about this is another issue. (Maybe reduce promised battery life to four hours?)

Apart from the shorter battery life, there is the issue of fans seemingly working  more often.

That is something I noticed and have read other people's comments on line

I cannot  think such fan activity is good in the long run

Hi everyone,

I have posted pages and pages ago and have been following every one of the posts day per day. Also very dissapointed with the situation. I have been following another famous Mac forums as "Macrumors" and, today, I have found this amazing and stupid comment about this thread:

The link: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1277226

Sorry for this post but I am so angry with this comment that I had to publish to get out of me...

Waiting for Apple to fix this "imaginarium" problem accordingly this genious guy.

marfape wrote:

 

Hi everyone,

 

I have posted pages and pages ago and have been following every one of the posts day per day. Also very dissapointed with the situation. I have been following another famous Mac forums as "Macrumors" and, today, I have found this amazing and stupid comment about this thread:

 

The link: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1277226

 

Sorry for this post but I am so angry with this comment that I had to publish to get out of me...

 

Waiting for Apple to fix this "imaginarium" problem accordingly this genious guy.

This guy has as much right to his viewpoint as you do, genius

Sorry, but if you say this is a "viewpoint" this means that all the people posting this problem are only reflecting a "viewpoint". He says: "This link proves nothing". Do you think is he only showing his viewpoint? For me is more than that, genius.

Viewpoint isn't quite the right word; a better way to state it is it's your experience; that doesn't mean it's not valid, but it may well also not be the experience of the vast majority of people running Lion.

marfape wrote:

 

Sorry, but if you say this is a "viewpoint" this means that all the people posting this problem are only reflecting a "viewpoint". He says: "This link proves nothing". Do you think is he only showing his viewpoint? For me is more than that, genius.

I'll give your point of view as much credence as I give his