Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

Heads up: take a look at the new apple store battery estimates for the macbook air and macbook pro. It reads 5 - 7 depending on the macbook air (11" or 13"), and 7 hours while browsing the web on any macbook pro. Do I remember it saying 10 hours or is it just old age?

It seems that I can fry eggs on my new MBP. 

That's too bad. I hoped that Lion 1.7.3 might solve problems and be worthy of installing next to Snow Leopard.

But it seems not much has changed since 1.7 pumped my CPU, toasting my logic board (according to the tech grapevine, more common than you know).  Uninstalled.

Although a lot of time has passed since my problem was resolved with a complete Apple-provided installation of all new parts, and there have been several revisions to Lion that I hope diminish the danger of overheating, it's still wise to keep an eye on your machine's actual heat.  Here's an open source application to help you do that, Temperature Monitor (by the makers of TinkerTool).  Works for me:

http://www.bresink.com/osx/TemperatureMonitor.html

My battery life has got worse if anything - only had this thing for 8 months or so and I've had it replaced 3 times!

Not too impressed

10.7.3 installed, could not shutdown at first, hard power off and reboot and reset PRAM later using 9.1 watts 1/3 brightness, nothing installed but Pages and report is 5hrs just on the net posting this from a full charge.  Going to reboot a few times and then monitor actual use on battery rather than the meter.  Will report back.

lesliefromstockton-on-tees wrote:

Going to reboot a few times and then monitor actual use on battery rather than the meter.  Will report back.

Let your mac finish some system processes after update. In my case it took about 10-15 minutes, CPU was almost 90%.

Rebooted three times, cpu at 3-4% web browsing to this site, reporting 7:09hrs.  99 percent remaining.  Now timing normal web use only.

Noticed that gestures still uses a good 15% processng power!

Flash still eats 15% of processor power on www.bbc.co.uk! whilst QT holds back at 6%.

Half our surfing amd 10% gone so that rate 5 hrs

lesliefromstockton-on-tees wrote:

 

Rebooted three times, cpu at 3-4% web browsing to this site, reporting 7:09hrs.  99 percent remaining.  Now timing normal web use only.

 

Noticed that gestures still uses a good 15% processng power!

How long is your sample? is 99% after 1 hour, 1 minute or 1 second?

Maybe a bit off topic but I never noticed this before the update... Is it normal that my battery gets discharged a bit even when I'm using the power adapder? I am using Logic Pro but no extreme CPU usage... It went from 100% to 95% even though I'm plugged in...

+ OS started indexing the drive a couple of hours ago even though I applied the update yesterday...

I just updated to 10.7.3 and it's worse if anything. After 45 minutes of light web browsing (using the Integrated Graphics Card and everything) I have 71% of battery left and (1:52 hours). It's ridiculous. I have the mid 2010 2.66 i7 Macbook Pro. As I bought it secondhand and it already had Lion installed I don't even have Snow Leopard on a disc to reinstal it and it's annoying to realize that my battery won't last 7 hours of light use as I was expecting.

Update: i looked again and it says 3:31 hours remaning at 69% of battery. Seems like it is the same as it has ever been (with Lion). It lasts a maximum of 4 hours, and being a 2010 model it should last around at least 7 hours of light use.

Second update: now at 61% my battery went down to 2:11 hours. So more than one hour in 8% of battery. I'm running chrome and skype only (away) and I'm stil using the integrated graphics card. I don't know what else to do...I've tried the system reset but it doesn't change absolutely anything, to the point I even doubt being doing it right, but there's little you go go wrong pressing three keys together...And I've done it around 5 times.

I'm seeing no significant change for the battery life...

Apple - Batteries - Notebooks

I've read through this topic over the course of several days.

One thing I'd like to know is what are the specs for these MacBooks that have less than expected battery life. I'm getting around 4-5 hours with the specs below from a full charge.

At idle, with 50% brightness Coconut battery utility indicates I'm using 10-11 watts. That is with no apps running. The CPU speed, amount of RAM and hard drive model will all make a difference. So let's post our specs and see what we can find.

Yes, I did all of the mentioned tweaks. Reduced brightness, turn off airport, bluetooth, etc....  I remember getting 10 hours with Snow Leopard..