Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

It's hard to make that call, from it seems that your battery is well below performance standards - especially for a new machine. I'd go to the Apple Store/Genius Lounge.

You can measure your battery the old fashioned way. Leave it on Safari, half brightness, and watch the battery levels. By Apple's own standards, you should get somewhere between six and seven hours. I'd bet you get half that, if that.

Right on, Pokemon!

I doubt you have a defective battery.  Any Lion battery issues are caused from the software.  When I went to the Genius Bar to see about any solution, he ran diagnostics on my computer and it showed my battery was at something like 83% after I got my MBP in 2009.  Also, since downgrading to SL, my battery works fine.

I've decided to try and do a clean install to see if that helps the battery life.

Any suggestions about what to take care about in the process? Or maybe there's some information I should gather about the current installation before doing the clean install which might help someone smarter than me?

I forgot to mention i have a root Process named Kernel_task that is hogging on average 409MB of RAM an almost constant thread count of 87 and cpu % of 1 - 2.7 %.

and if you were wondering from my earlier post if i had my bluetooth and wifi on, unfortunately the anwser is no.

B_Cally wrote:

 

I forgot to mention i have a root Process named Kernel_task that is hogging on average 409MB of RAM an almost constant thread count of 87 and cpu % of 1 - 2.7 %.

Kill the task in Activity Monitor, observe whether or not battery life estimates improve.

First i must ask if it is safe to do so (terminate via Activity Monitor) given that i have no clue what it is (Mac Newbie). secondly it doesn't offer that option even if i wanted to again making me assume it must be important i hope, but what is it anyway?

OK, reboot and go to Activity Monior to check whether this process appears at startup and consumes large amounts at once, or nearly so.

Csound1 wrote:

 

B_Cally wrote:

 

I forgot to mention i have a root Process named Kernel_task that is hogging on average 409MB of RAM an almost constant thread count of 87 and cpu % of 1 - 2.7 %.

Kill the task in Activity Monitor, observe whether or not battery life estimates improve.

…Talking about helping people!!

Well at least you're getting back some sense of humor.

So i have completely shutdown and booted up my machine twice going straight in to activity monitor and checking the values Kernel_task

First boot thread count 82, CPU .3 - 1% , RAM 322MB

Second boot count 82, CPU .1 - 1.2% , RAM 254MB quickly rose to 324MB.

Make a new user account, same priveleges as yours, reboot (not logout/in) to the new account and check activity monitor again.

Note that this just a test, check the estimated battery life then reboot back to the regular account.

Created a new account same rights as mine shutdown booted up logged in to the new account i created opened activity monitor and felt good that it wasn't there before i realized that all processes wasn't selected and there it was Kernel_task thread count 82 cpu% .1 - 2.3 and 345MB of ram in use.

OK, and what is your battery life in actuality?

If (as you said before) you get 2 hours under this load I would take it to Apple for diagnosis.

According to coconut battery its 100%

B_Cally wrote:

 

According to coconut battery its 100%

That's not what I meant, your battery appears normal, there are no abnormal loads, time for Apple to take a look.