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My MBP battery life has drastically reduced after Lion upgrade..anybody else see this symptom ?

My MBP used to get 7-8 hours on a full charge, after my upgrade to Lion yesterday night, I seem to be getting a max life of barely 3 hours....this is awful. Anybody see the same problem ?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 21, 2011 12:22 PM

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46 replies

Jul 22, 2011 10:02 AM in response to geekygoof

Same thing happening to me. I've posted the following earlier under another discussion thread:


Day two after installing Lion: I have my MBP sitting in front of me open. Started off with 3:57 battery time (low for just waking from sleep after charged overnight). Only Safari and Speed Download were the open apps and I wasn't using them - just desktop screen showing. In twenty minutes went to 2:01 remaining. Opened Activity Monitor and the only significant process shown is kernel_task at 22% and mds which ranges 0 to 88%. Don't understand enough to know what that means except to share it so help can come from Apple for a fix!


Re: the Spotlight indexing, wouldn't that occur upon installing and initial start up in Lion and then no longer be doing it once indexed?

Jul 22, 2011 10:18 AM in response to geekygoof

Same Problem and talked to Apple support this morning that was of really no help. My MBP is only about 1.5yrs old....battery worked perfectly up until I upgraded to Lion. I'm now getting a Service Battery msg and when fully charged, completely drains and shuts down about 20 mins later. Prior to upgrade my battery would last approx 5-6 hrs.


Support stated that Lion has nothing to do with it and it's just a coincidence (not believing this) of timing and that software can't affect hardware, i.e. battery. My battery cycle count is 182 which he even stated was quite low and not indicative that the battery had cycled out. They suggest that I reinstall Lion and if that doesn't work then i need a new battery which I would have to pay for as it's out of warrenty. Very frustrated and considering wiping and reinstalling Snow Leopard....He said to please let us know if that corrects the problem as they welcome hearing about solutions to issues....


Big Apple fan for years now...but have to say this is the first time they've really disappointmented me with a product release....


So not sure that this helps...but getting the word out and hopefully someone else has had better luck or has figured something out before i go through the pain of a complete overhall...

Jul 22, 2011 3:35 PM in response to geekygoof

Okey, here is what I had to

1. Yes as many of you indicated, Spotlight was indexing the hard disk contents

2. My citrix plugin client [for my vpn access] was running as root and was consuming 150% of my cpu, it was running for no reason. [Here is a thread which explains what to do about it. .. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191543


Once I shut down the citrix client, my m/c works like the old days :-)

In fact, I think the battery management has improved slighty, fully charged my MBP show it has 9hours of battery life.

Unfortunately, I can longer vpn to my work pc :-(

Jul 22, 2011 6:39 PM in response to geekygoof

Perhaps it is just me that is seeing that the shorter battery life corresponds directly to the same amount of time the battery would last if you had the larger video card on? The battery life would drop almost in half if you went in to power options under snow leopard and chose performance over better battery life. Since Lion is supposed to manage that automatically now, I wonder if perhaps it just defaults to the larger video card? I am not sure how to determine which is running at any given time, but I bet there is a smart person out there who would, and I am interested in knowing.


Again, just a thought, but it fits the facts...

Jul 23, 2011 12:53 AM in response to geekygoof

This tip from another discussion post helped my situation:




I just called Apple support and they talked me through resetting the power manager, the battery now seems to be fine. I can give you the steps the gentleman over the phone gave me, it might just help.


1. Turn off the computer.


2. Hold down Ctrl+Option+shift


3. While holding down these button, press and hold the power button as well.


4. Hold all buttons for at least ten seconds.


5. power back on the computer.


For me that worked, i don't know how it will work for everyone else but immediately my power estimation jumped up to around 9:30 and 10 hours. 🙂 Which is two hours more than i started with.




Jul 23, 2011 6:55 AM in response to geekygoof

My issue was that I was changing *many files frequently which was causing MobileBackups to be created and indexed (and re-indexed), and well as causing the sleepimage to be updated and maintained -- this is different behavior than I had under Snow Leopard. The new behavior just uses a LOT more CPU and disk activity.


Once my LR Photo library was rebuilt, LR previews created, and metadata stabilized the CPU activity calmed down. This actually took a couple of days -- much longer than the system information of Spotlight indexing belies. Spotlight indexing takes about 10 minutes on my system, the other processes such as LR preview creation took hours and there is no indicator built in to monitor progress (I did it through raw Spotlight querying and watching the progress of the .MobileBackups (a hidden file)).


* Maintain ~10,000 images in Adobe Lightroom; specifically having new Lightroom preview files created, shadowed, indexed.


† I'm sure other large file repositories will have similar issues: Capture One libraries (especially with sidecar files since that effectively doubles the number of files), Music libraries (associated metadata, album artwork, DRM)

My MBP battery life has drastically reduced after Lion upgrade..anybody else see this symptom ?

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