do i have to buy one of the new mac laptops (and are they same as my father's oldsmobile circa 2009 MBP)?

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Level 1

74 points

do i have to buy one of the new mac laptops (and are they same as my father's oldsmobile circa 2009 MBP)?

i am two days away from my applecare warranty running out on my 13" mid 2009 MBP and i just ran a capture data while doing not much of anything and i lose 50% power in just over 1 hour. i have a new battery as of two months ago and a new motherboard and i just cannot /believe/ the answers i have been getting related to battery life.

if i buy a 2012 top-o-line should i expect the same kind of battery life? i mean, i am not going to go into the /other/ problems with this machine but strictly speaking on the life of the battery do the new machines also behave like this in terms of battery life?

i keep being told that a lot of it depends on how high i have the screen brightness set but this is a little like telling me to drive 30 MPH in a 70 MPH zone. if i can't /see/ the screen at 50% what good is telling me "it depends on your usage" to justify 2 hours of battery life with a new battery as being legit.

am i missing something or if i buy a new top o line should i expect the same performance and same answers? because i definitely cannot see dropping 2.5K on a new laptop based on the performance and justifications for lack thereof that i keep receiving.

TIA

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1), with 64 bit Win7 Boot Camp | iCloud

Posted on Feb 6, 2013 4:14 PM

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Answer 1

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GeekBoy.from.Illinois

Level 4

2,829 points

Feb 6, 2013 4:23 PM in response to hotwheels22

Well, depending upon what you intend to use your system for, you might be able to get many years of good usage out of a MBP. My first MBP was a Late 2007 17" 2.4GHz Core2 Duo processor system. I still have it and it still works great. It may not be the best for some tasks, but it still works great for most things. I have two batteries for it, and they both still run the machine for several hours, but I seldom run it on battery, so I don't know exactly how long it will last.

I was doing enough audio & video editing, that last spring, I bought a Later 2011 MBP, and I expect to get 2-3 more years out of it (or more) before I need to replace it. My new system is a Late 2011 17" 2.4GHz quad core i7 system, so it performs my video and audio editing much better than my older system, but the older one still works...

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Answer 2

Feb 6, 2013 4:26 PM in response to hotwheels22

Runaway applications can shorten battery runtime, affect performance, and increase heat and fan activity

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Answer 3

hotwheels22 Author

Level 1

74 points

Feb 6, 2013 4:42 PM in response to GeekBoy.from.Illinois

thanks man.

do you use the new laptop off of power at all?

if so, how long can you use it?

i mean i have heard "depends" so many times i want to puke but say you are running mail and safari with no streaming video and you basically just let these apps sit there doing nothing...

i mean - on my laptop i cannot take it off of power if i was to run photoshop or something.

thanks.

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Answer 4

hotwheels22 Author

Level 1

74 points

Feb 6, 2013 5:22 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

hi grant.

you were kind enough to post this before and i have to admit i have to read it again.

but, the deal is that i get in there periodically and anything that doesn't sound very familiar that is using over 79% CPU i have to kill?

and then i just keep doing this somehow or i research what the process is and how to keep it from starting up?

THANKS

jon

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Answer 5

Feb 6, 2013 5:30 PM in response to hotwheels22

If you are running a photo processing program that you started, and it is using a lot of CPU, that is what you expect.

If you find something that you don't expect is eating your CPU, post its name and readers can tell you what it is, and what you can do about it. Blindly killing it will not solve the problem -- it will be back.

example:

When the task that controls the Dock is using over 10 percent of the CPU, that is a problem. And many users who upgraded found out that was exactly what was eating their battery life. There are articles now about how to fix that.

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Answer 6

hotwheels22 Author

Level 1

74 points

Feb 12, 2013 9:18 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

thanks Grant.

i just cannot see how they consider this machine to be working satisfactorily. i feel like i have been chasing down ghosts since the day i bought the machine and i don't do anything computationally intensive or have startup items or do anything really when i work on this machine.

/sometimes/ i will a lot of low level software four or five programs such as preview and pages and safari but i am /frequently/ in the position of waiting for 15 second to one minute beachball hangs on this thing during restart, wake from sleep, open first program after wake from sleep or restart etc.

i have 8 GB of RAM in the machine and it is just so pitiful to try to work on.

i tested at 1 1/2 years on the desk with nothing running and i get 3.5 hours of battery life, when i worked on it i got 2 (even now after a brand new battery i am getting 2 hours of battery life out of it).

i tried to bring it in under warranty to get the keys replaced because 33% of them are all at different angles which makes working on the machine a big chore and they turned me away asking me to specify /which/ keys needed replacing. now i have to go back with a list of like 15 keys that are at wonky angles making life hard to get work done.

i put 8 GB of ram in this thing. that brings the price to like 15 - 16 hundred. i have a machine that it is hard to /type/ on and if i keep the screen level at 50% (which i cannot even see) then i am assured i will get better battery life. i mean, i keep being told "it depends" and this is like some kind of joke.

it's like telling someone to put chains on their tires and keep the car under 25 miles per hour and they will get where they are going when the speed limit is 60 MPH and the weather is perfectly clear...

i keep talking to advanced technicians to get things fixed (like iCloud sync is totally screwed and i can't even get a Capture Data to complete at this point) and they keep telling me that the behavior is bizarre and they have never seen such a thing before. i bring it in to mac genius bar and they finally give me a new battery and new mother board after telling me for years that it checks out fine or turn me away for some reason.

then i am back to fighting poor performance, beachball hangs, cursor freezes or picking processes out of utility monitor.

i think i have decided to sell this machine and give up on it...

sorry for the rant but this machine is uber frustrating.

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