Michael Empric

Q: 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

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Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

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  • by kapanmc,

    kapanmc kapanmc Nov 25, 2011 11:56 AM in response to mulligans missus
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 25, 2011 11:56 AM in response to mulligans missus

    mulligans missus wrote:

     

    kapanmc wrote:

     

    Even in standby mode or sleep mode it consumes 25% in a day (my very old Win7 Acer even consumes less than 10% a day with a 5 yrs old battery)

     

    You get 96 hours out of a battery that Apple says you get 7 hours out of and you are complaining? I would sell it on ebay for ten grand!!!!  (25% in a day - 24hrs X 4 = 96 hours) And you got 2400 hours out of the Acer? IGive me the name of your Power supplier!!! lol

    Well honestly, my old Acer which has a 3 cell battery really runs around 7 - 10 days in sleep mode. The power supply is as you can simply predict, it s a Chinese company so nothing is special... lol

     

    Indeed, the point that you misunderstood is that I was talking about the sleep mode performence lol

  • by winter_bob,

    winter_bob winter_bob Nov 25, 2011 5:43 PM in response to Michael Empric
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 25, 2011 5:43 PM in response to Michael Empric

    anyone notice how until at least yesterday a google search for "macbook pro battery life" would display this thread as the second hit and now it won't even show within the first ten pages of results (or at all)?

     

    I noticed this because searching for "macbook pro battery life" was the easiest way I had found to actually reach this thread and follow it

     

    after appleinsider gave this issue some visibility (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/11/15/apple_still_working_to_fix_lion_ba ttery_life_issues_on_older_macbooks.html) this might have gone even more out of control, right? (still it is interesting they mention "old" macbook, when this thread clearly has many examples of old and 'young' macbooks failing...

     

    all very strange indeed.

     

    btw, I have a early 2011 15" macbook pro (i7, 8Gb RAM, 128SSD) bought just a few months ago and nothing, absolutely nothing I do changes the fact that my battery lasts at most 2h30 (except, of course, dimming its scree to near invisibility, disabling wifi and fidling with gfxcardstatus, which only gives me about 1 or 2 more hours and completely ruins google chrome).

     

    i've been using macs for 6 years and unacceptable is the least I can say about this.

  • by alainca1,

    alainca1 alainca1 Nov 25, 2011 6:13 PM in response to winter_bob
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 25, 2011 6:13 PM in response to winter_bob

    Perhaps the google ranking dropped simply because during this Thanksgiving holiday, there would be many more searches for applie products, while there have been fewer posts in this thread. However, I'm sure the ranking helps us get this issue noticed.

  • by Cabal7,

    Cabal7 Cabal7 Nov 25, 2011 7:18 PM in response to SParker1tx
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Nov 25, 2011 7:18 PM in response to SParker1tx

    I stumbled on this thread looking for a completely different issue with Lion and it made me think about it. Showed my Spring 2010 13" MacBook Pro 2.4GHz 8GB DDR3 life at 5:47 at 100% Charge.. reset the PMU as suggested by many in this thread and it jumped my battery life up to 9:07! (at 50% screen brightness)

     

    Thank you to SParker1tx for the information that you posted, helped my battery life for sure.

     

    I also reset the PRAM on my MBP which also helped to increase and stop the loading screen from freezing/slow to start up! This was also extremely helpful thanks to Carl Berkeley (www.macusersguide.com)

     

    To reset the PRAM you simply:

    1. Shut down your Mac.
    2. Locate and hold simultaneously the Command (Apple), Option, P, and R keys.
    3. Turn on your Mac and hold the key combination before the gray screen appears.
    4. Only release the keys after the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for a second time.

    http://www.macusersguide.com/2009/05/resetting-pram-nvram-pmu/

     

    Hopefully this works for you guys that are having slow startup issues and battery life problems with your Macs!

  • by Taoswoman,

    Taoswoman Taoswoman Nov 25, 2011 7:17 PM in response to Michael Empric
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 25, 2011 7:17 PM in response to Michael Empric

    Me too! This is terrible! I am beginning to regret upgrading.

  • by m.burger,

    m.burger m.burger Nov 26, 2011 3:26 AM in response to Michael Empric
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 26, 2011 3:26 AM in response to Michael Empric
  • by alainca1,

    alainca1 alainca1 Nov 26, 2011 5:01 AM in response to m.burger
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 26, 2011 5:01 AM in response to m.burger

    Coud someone explain the implications of the last post?

  • by m.burger,

    m.burger m.burger Nov 26, 2011 5:14 AM in response to alainca1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 26, 2011 5:14 AM in response to alainca1

    Firefox and Thunderbird both automatically switch to discrete GPU on startup, as described at http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/797478 for instance.

     

    The developers are aware of this issue and will fix this in one of the upcoming respective releases.

  • by Taoswoman,

    Taoswoman Taoswoman Nov 26, 2011 8:49 AM in response to Taoswoman
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 26, 2011 8:49 AM in response to Taoswoman

    All I know is that I have been doing some basic web browsing .. no movies, no flash, nothing complex .. and in just under two hours I have used 70% of the battery. That is unacceptable. It charged all night and was 100% when I began. That means that it is using 1/3 of the available power every hour. This is an early 2011 15" MacBook Pro and I really think I should be able to use it for more than 3 hours.

     

    btw .. I have been using Safari and nothing else.

  • by Poikkeus,

    Poikkeus Poikkeus Nov 26, 2011 9:52 AM in response to Taoswoman
    Level 4 (2,785 points)
    Nov 26, 2011 9:52 AM in response to Taoswoman

    I've just starting using a family member's MBP, dated 2011, 13" monitor. I performed a basic battery test at half-brightness, and simply browsed the web.

     

    Using the battery only, my battery life was 4 hours, 19 minutes - a long, long way from the promised seven hour battery life.

     

    Apple really must do something about its battery life - and the disparity between sales claims and reality.

  • by DrChandra,

    DrChandra DrChandra Nov 26, 2011 2:07 PM in response to Poikkeus
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 26, 2011 2:07 PM in response to Poikkeus

    Since our discussion soon is going to reach 150K mark (95 pages) it's time for a small recap.

     

    - Lion OS battery issues still exists

    - For majority of people on this forum all suggested solutions failed

    - Many of us have battery replaced by Apple but no change

    - Problems affects all Macbook models regardless of their age (not as reported some older models only)

    - Apple is silent about this issue, only rare phone calls to a few guys on this forum by Apple tech person

    - Battery problem affects Snow Leopard too after 10.6.8 update

    - Snow Leopard 10.6.7 works like a charm (proven many times)

    - Reporting this issue to Apple my help in boosting our stats and to shift more focus on the issue

    - Numbers of affected Macs are much higher since many users are not aware of this issues for various reasons

    - Facebook page that covers this issue

     

     

     

    PS If you are happy with your Macbook battery performance please do not waist any time to convince people on this forum that problem does not exists

  • by Loerincz,

    Loerincz Loerincz Nov 26, 2011 2:57 PM in response to DrChandra
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Nov 26, 2011 2:57 PM in response to DrChandra

    DrChandra wrote:

     

    Since our discussion soon is going to reach 150K mark (95 pages) it's time for a small recap.

     

    [...]

     

    PS If you are happy with your Macbook battery performance please do not waist any time to convince people on this forum that problem does not exists

    Very well pointed, DrChandra! +1!

  • by lesliefromstockton-on-tees,

    lesliefromstockton-on-tees lesliefromstockton-on-tees Nov 26, 2011 3:14 PM in response to Loerincz
    Level 1 (25 points)
    Nov 26, 2011 3:14 PM in response to Loerincz

    I've just put 10.7.3 beta on and battery life after a full charge jumped from 2.5 hrs to 5:11hrs, testing it now to see if it lasts as reported.

     

    Link to beta is:

     

    http://www.grabi.org/download-os-x-lion-10-7-3-build-11d16/

  • by Redarm,

    Redarm Redarm Nov 26, 2011 3:54 PM in response to lesliefromstockton-on-tees
    Level 4 (2,600 points)
    Mac OS X
    Nov 26, 2011 3:54 PM in response to lesliefromstockton-on-tees

    Just a word of warning to anybody desperate and downloading this beta version:

     

    as stated on the site: "Developers who choose to upgrade will not be able to revert back to the previous build after updating.." and there can be worse things lurking in betas than short battery life.  Be warned and don't come crying here if it doesn't work out.

  • by lesliefromstockton-on-tees,

    lesliefromstockton-on-tees lesliefromstockton-on-tees Nov 26, 2011 4:51 PM in response to Redarm
    Level 1 (25 points)
    Nov 26, 2011 4:51 PM in response to Redarm

    Been running it all day, it appears OK with no problems so far.  3hrs running and 2:59 reported left but yes, proceed with caution, this is not my main Mac!!

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