Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

Has anyone compared battery life between 10.6.7 vs 10.6.8?

indeed. only problem is for some of us, we can get SL to load, as its not compatible with the new graphics card they chose to use.

so we are stuck with lion. and it breaks my heart.

That makes me feel just a little better that I have a 2 year old MBP and can restore to Snow Leopard.

I noticed no change in battery performance (or heat issues) between 10.6.7 and 10.6.8 on my 2.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo.

I didn't perceive any losses upgrading from 10.6.7 to 10.6.8.  But that was awhile ago; my memory could be rusty (and I wasn't really paying attention, as my machines are generally plugged in when I'm not on the road).

My late 2009 MBP's battery capacity is down to 74% and with a 93% charge, I'm getting a reading of 3:43 fully charged.  The total charge at full capacity, assuming that loss is linear, is about 4.5 hours, maybe 5 hours, with several processes running including Synk Pro full time in background (not that it's an energy hog).  That sounds about right, as my MBP is in use 24/7 except when it's sleeping.

My 2010 MPA with a full charge and 87% capacity, same basic configuration and processes running, reads about 3 hours, which translates to about 3.5 hours run time.  That's a disappointing surprise.  This is the Mac on which I installed Lion before restoring Snow Leopard.  Makes me wonder whether something from Lion is still onboard, as I was getting 7-8 hours prior to Lion's installation and removal.  The MBA is rebuilding its Spotlight index, which draws on CPU.  Dimming the MPA's extremely bright hi-res screen adds about 15% run time. 

I'm going to run them both down and recalibrate their chips; will report back after I do.  Despite the Forum topic, I never detected great changes in run times due to changing OSs.  I didn't have Lion on my machine long enough to do a systematic evaluation.

Bob Jacobson wrote:

 

This is the Mac on which I installed Lion before restoring Snow Leopard.  Makes me wonder whether something from Lion is still onboard,

 

I didn't have Lion on my machine long enough to do a systematic evaluation.

Well your results won't be very accurate, will they. If you reverted back to Snow Leopard properly, you should have no 'remnants' of Lion left. So it's not relevent to the Lion topic as everybody claims they had no problems with Snow Leopard. You included, I believe.

Good Luck

Bob Jacobson wrote:

 

I didn't perceive any losses upgrading from 10.6.7 to 10.6.8.  But that was awhile ago; my memory could be rusty (and I wasn't really paying attention, as my machines are generally plugged in when I'm not on the road).

 

My late 2009 MBP's battery capacity is down to 74% and with a 93% charge, I'm getting a reading of 3:43 fully charged.  The total charge at full capacity, assuming that loss is linear, is about 4.5 hours, maybe 5 hours, with several processes running including Synk Pro full time in background (not that it's an energy hog).  That sounds about right, as my MBP is in use 24/7 except when it's sleeping.

 

My 2010 MPA with a full charge and 87% capacity, same basic configuration and processes running, reads about 3 hours, which translates to about 3.5 hours run time.  That's a disappointing surprise.  This is the Mac on which I installed Lion before restoring Snow Leopard.  Makes me wonder whether something from Lion is still onboard, as I was getting 7-8 hours prior to Lion's installation and removal.  The MBA is rebuilding its Spotlight index, which draws on CPU.  Dimming the MPA's extremely bright hi-res screen adds about 15% run time. 

 

I'm going to run them both down and recalibrate their chips; will report back after I do.  Despite the Forum topic, I never detected great changes in run times due to changing OSs.  I didn't have Lion on my machine long enough to do a systematic evaluation.

You don't mention how you restored SL but if from a clone or a clean install there won't be 'remnants' of Lion.

FWIW, on 3 new MBA (i7 265G) I am getting estimates of 6hrs on a full charge, under some load (installing apps, synchronizing server folders), but I admit to not having any MBA's prior to these 3. My MBP got 4hrs under Snow Leopard and gets pretty much the same with Lion (all versions to date) so I am at a loss to understand why your battery should have declined so much, even after Lion was replaced.

Whatever is causing this I suspect that it is (a) a multifold issue, and (b) not easily locatable.

STOP PRESS

After 5 months of problems, MacBook Pro, Lion, 8GB, 512GB SSD and less than 3 1/2 - 4 hours on average per charge. Been playing with a number of things/advice from Apple.

I've been running for 15 mins from Full Charge, and whilst typing this, running Safari, Mac Mail, Evernote, Google Music and Drop Box, I am showing... WAIT FOR IT....

9hrs and 16 mins remaining.

This is a first... I am going to watch this over the next 24 hours and report back on the things I've done.

THIS IS WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT - THIS IS WHAT I EXPECTED FROM THIS MACHINE 5 months AGO when I brought IT..... It proves the machine is capable of 9 to 10 hours. THIS IS PROOF.

Wish me luck and WATCH this SPACE!!!!

Franc_Iphone wrote:

 

It proves the machine is capable of 9 to 10 hours. THIS IS PROOF.

 

 

Mine always has, even in Lion.

Cheers to you

Right, but this is the first time we have PROVED that a machine, on LION, that has been having TERRIBLE battery life for 5+ months (new machine) can be fixed... This is without changing hardware, without replacing batteries, without an SMC reset etc., with the same applications running. The only thing we found (with Apples help) were some old applications that were running that did not show up anywhere except by running their deep diagnostics... i..e they told me some apps that were running that I didn't know were running and obviously came over from other places but don't show up.....

Again, let me do some more work and then I can report what we found, and what I did to get the battery life back up 250% from what I was experiencing... for 5+ months..

Franc_Iphone wrote:

 

Right, but this is the first time we have PROVED that a machine, on LION, that has been having TERRIBLE battery life for 5+ months (new machine) can be fixed... This is without changing hardware, without replacing batteries, without an SMC reset etc., with the same applications running. The only thing we found (with Apples help) were some old applications that were running that did not show up anywhere except by running their deep diagnostics... i..e they told me some apps that were running that I didn't know were running and obviously came over from other places but don't show up.....

 

Again, let me do some more work and then I can report what we found, and what I did to get the battery life back up 250% from what I was experiencing... for 5+ months..

Can't wait.

The only thing we found (with Apples help) were some old applications that were running that did not show up anywhere except by running their deep diagnostics... i..e they told me some apps that were running that I didn't know were running and obviously came over from other places but don't show up.....

For this to be a universal solution, it would mean that everyone cmplaining of low battery life has had old applications running continuously at least since installing Lion.  That would be shocking. As would everyone achieving a 9-10 hour battery life, a new record.   But never say never, it's a strange world.

To my ever vigilant peer reviewers mulligans missus and CSound1, no worries:  my MPA running Snow Leopard after two hours took a rebound and now lists four more hours of battery life, for a total of about 7.25 hours.  (Reindexing of Spotlight was absorbing a lot of CPU cycles.  Now its completed its task. I assume this was the cause.)   As the machine provided 8 hours when it was new, I'm satisfied that 10.6.8 isn't costing me battery life.  

So no worries, your favorite OS Lion isn't responsible for any depletions on my machines, once you subtract its initial thermite-bomb effect.

Indeed, would make semse.Most of us carried over our applications, tossing the publicaly recognized aps which do not work with Lion (AppleWorks,for instance) but I am sure

-Many of us have legacy applications which we thought were harmless, which seem to launch under Lion.

-Many have older aps we don't run , still on our hard drive with  invisible files or system/library files affecting the processor

- Invisible stuff we can't see,remnants of aps we tossed or remnants of previous OS which we don't see and thus don;t know about.

So we need to know how to find these things, eliminate without tossing needed code and components.

Overnight, with the lid closed, my machine had also been consuming ~10% of the battery. Last night, for the first time ever, it consumed just 3% (in 8 1/2 hours). Finally, all heading in the right direction.

Just because it's third party software, as usual, no need to be sarcastic, Bobby.