MacBook Pro :: How To Check Battery (life)
Jun 13, 2012
I bought a 2009/2010 MBP a couple of years ago (still have AppleCare on it) and the battery life on this machine has been absolutely atrocious. I feel like I unplug it from my desktop and sit down on the couch and thirty to forty minutes of web surfing and i am down to 25%. and i have to plug in or I will get a warning that i am under 5% in another 10 minutes.Does anyone know if this is partially or fully due to Parallels? I just checked and with not much running all i see is a prl>vm_app that is taking up 12.6% CPU.
I mean I hesitate to ask this because I ran a test about six months ago by fully charging it and turning it on (no apps running) and my recollection was that it went into deep sleep in about three hours. This was when it was doing nothing.Any facts to measure this against or any way to do an actual analysis on my end? The cats at the genius bar are always like "situation normal" which makes me think there is something wrong with this class of machines or something.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 10.6.8 with 64 bit Win7 Parallels
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Nov 11, 2009
i just ordered a late 2008 macbook pro 15 with the dual GPUs (9400m and 9600m GT) and I'm a little worried about the battery life.
-What can I expect if just doing normal every day stuff (web surfing mostly?)
-does watching a movie off of the hard disk use less battery than watching it off a DVD? Is there a big difference?
I'm not a big gamer but would like to have the horsepower to play a game should one come out that I want. I'm also not a big traveler so battery times are only of average importance.
Basically, I'm asking if I made a good purchase considering I have only average concerns for both battery and game performance. They had the new 7 hour battery 15" macbook pro for the same price but it doesn't have the dual GPUs.
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May 4, 2012
I calibrated my MacBook Pro battery and then noticed that the battery life seemed slightly shorter after that. I calibrated it according to this: [URL]
Just wondering if I have done anything wrong...
One more question... What do they mean by "At this point, save your work. Continue to use your computer; when the battery gets very low, the computer will automatically go to sleep." Does it mean that I have to use the computer until it just shuts down or should I shut it down once the "Low Battery" warning pops up?
Info:
Logic Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Jul 16, 2009
I have a 13" 2.4 GHZ white macbook that I bought in march of 2008. About 4 months ago I all of the sudden started having problems with battery life. It was very abrupt. I used to be able to take my macbook and sit through 3 classes or more with no trouble in regards to batter life. Then suddenly the battery would drain within a few hours. It has remained that way since.
I've spent the last month or so looking around forums and other places to try and find someone with a similar problem and possible solutions. As a result I've discovered that my situation seams to be somewhat unique.
Using cocoanut battery I tested my battery's capacity and it remains at a solid 98%. How can my battery still be at 98% capacity and have such a short battery life? I also seam to be losing charge while my macbook is closed. How and why does that happen? If I leave my macbook closed for a day or two it can lose up to 25% charge just sitting there!
I've tried loads of things including turning off unnecessary things such as sharing and bluetooth and calibrating my battery, all with no avail.
What is going on?? My battery is too old to be eligable for a recal and I'm not paying $30 just to have a phone conversation with a "Genius". If anyone has any idea what's going on and any possible advice, I would greatly appreciate it.
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Apr 17, 2012
I am getting a very short battery life out of my "New" A1261 battery - we're talking 2.5 hours tops. I've recycled it a few times, but this is no where near the "7" hours that is quoted.
Info:
MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2008), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Aug 10, 2009
I've had this MBP for just over 8 months now, I'd intially purchased one in november, but the audio out used to give a crackle sound so they replaced the laptop. Moving on to the point - in the last week or so, I've noticed the MBP suddenly seems to get very hot and the fans turn on and thus suddenly becomes very noisy. I was using it on the bed so could appreciate that I may have been blocking the vents, but I've had it on a stand the past couple of days and it still seems to do it for no particular reason. The charger usually always gets ridiculously hot, but the MBP used to stay relatively cool, now the MBP gets hot independently of whether its being charged or not. Moreover, my battery life has gone from what used to last 4 hours, to around 2.25.
Cocunut battery gave the following stats:
Current Battery capacity: 4483mAh
Load Cycles: 222
Age: 8 months
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Dec 29, 2010
I have just bought a MacBook. I have downloaded the Battery Health Monitor and it says obviously that my current capacity is at 100%, with 5,791 mAh. I would like to know how many hours does this value correspond to, because it has certainly not been the highly announced 10 hours battery life
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Jul 11, 2009
My two year old macbook pro battery life is getting shorter after recharging. I only get about 40 minutes on a full charge when it used to be 3 hrs. Is it time to replace the battery?
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Jul 20, 2010
how is windows xp battery life compared to windows 7 battery life on mac using bootcamp?
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Sep 5, 2010
I am interested in getting a refurbished Macbook Air. I was looking at the following two models:
Macbook Air Rev B., 1.86 GHz, 2GB RAM, 128 GB SSD for $1349 OR
Macbook Air Rev C., 2.13 GHz, 2GB RAM, 128 GB SSD for $1549
Other than the processor difference of 0.27 GHz, and based on reading the technical specs of each system, I don't see any difference between the two machines. The one piece of information that I couldn't find was the advertised battery life for the Rev. B unit. The Rev. C unit is supposedly rated for 5 hours of wireless productivity. Is the same battery used in the Rev B also or is the battery of lower WHr?
My needs are pretty simple - I would like to get the Air as a small and portable, easy to carry machine for rounds and writing up patient notes, consult notes, etc. It will not be my primary machine, but hopefully a worthy road-warrior. I will be using Windows for the clinical electronic medical record application, but other than that, all other use will be on Mac OS X. Based on this, would you recommend going with the Rev B or Rev C. Money is tight, and this will be a gift from one of my mentors, but I do want to get the biggest bang for the buck. If the only difference between the two machines is processor speed, I can't justify spending 200$ extra just for a 0.27 GHz gain.
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Oct 6, 2010
I have a 2007 White Macbook 2.4 Intel Core 2 Duo Laptop. I purchased it in June 2007 and this is my current battery health. Check the picture below, It's pretty amazing and I don't know how I did it. I'm on my computer almost everyday. Any idead on what I did to get such great battery life after three years? I know people with newer MacBook Pros that have terrible battery life after a year and a half.
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Dec 6, 2008
I bought a 1st Gen Macbook Air in March of this year and I recently have noticed that my battery is not lasting as long as it should, so I checked iStat and it said that my battery life is at 86%. I also have a 12 inch powerbook G4 that still has the same battery it came with and the battery life is also 86% and it is more than five years old. Is this normal for the Macbook Air or should I take it into Apple?
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Jul 18, 2009
I have a quick question about the battery in early 2008 MBP. The laptop is 13 months old, with 273 load cycles, and it is already down to 72% of original capacity. I've read that it should still have 80% at 300 cycles. Is this normal, or is the battery dying faster than it should? I don't suppose there's anything I can do short of buying a new battery right??
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Sep 9, 2010
I got my MacBook Pro on the 1st of September and I'm a bit worried about the battery life. At the moment the screen brightness is one bar and bluetooth is off, which is how I normally have it and the battery life time estimate keeps changing quite a lot. 5 minutes ago it said 5:11 left, and since then it's changed to 7:30, 7:58 and now it's saying 6:50 and is now on 95% and 8:03. I'm not doing anything differently and I don't know why it's doing this.
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Oct 20, 2010
Would be extremely interested in hearing about the battery life of the MacBook Air either the 13.3" or 11.6" from someone using it firsthand.
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Oct 21, 2010
Im a little confused, is the Air Battery life that good? I've taken the following claims from the Apple website. MacBook Air - Get up to 5 hours of battery life on a single charge on the 11-inch model and up to 7 hours on the 13-inch model. 13" MacBook Pro - The new energy-efficient architecture in the 13-inch MacBook Pro gives you up to 10 hours of battery life on a single charge. I understand that Steve Jobs advised that they were using a better way to measure battery life for the Air that reflect real world usage better (WiFi Browsing I think?) so how does this compare to the MBP range? I guess the MBP battery claims were made using another older method, so any thoughts on how the Air's battery life compares to other PC's and Mac's?
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Oct 29, 2010
Anyone give me a rough idea on battery life on the previous generation C2D 2.13 128 SSD model?
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Nov 3, 2010
would like to say that is my first mac and I am loving it. I've got the new 13" 1.86ghz 128gb and the upgraded ram 4gb. Now I've fully charged it and left it on a further 2 hours or so, following the instructions for calibrating the battery. Now that I'm using the macbook, I'm noticing the battery going down fairly quick, already at 88% after 30mins of use. Is it supposed to go down this quick?
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Nov 21, 2010
Looking into getting a SSD 128GB for my 2009 uMB but I am wondering if that helps extend your battery life because I am getting 3.5 to 4 Hours on a single charge now. I just wonder if I can get more than 5 hours out of the battery with an SSD, then I can use the external drive for everything else but OS and Applications.
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Dec 18, 2010
I have become incredibly confused and frustrated as to why my MBP battery life has gone down the tube. I've had it around release date with minimal cycles. I've tried:
1. brightness reduction
2. turning off wifi/bluetooth
3. items that auto log when computer is turned on where removed (such as adobe updater)
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Dec 21, 2010
How long are you guys getting out of your battery? I was mostly just using the Internet and only got 4 hours. Is that common?
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Nov 2, 2008
I was an early adopter of the MBA 1.0 and had to return it due to all the "Rev A" issues that plague Apple machines (just look at the new MBPs and MBs). The unit I had back then had about a 2-3 hours of use (vs. Apple's claimed 5) and it took FOREVER to fully charge the battery. Not to mention the core shut downs, ridiculously loud 6200 rpm fan, excessive heat, etc. etc.
I was wondering if any early 2.0 owners could comment on battery life or charging. Have they fixed this problem? Any 1.0 owners notice less batt. life now that Apple claims 4.5 and we have the nvidia chipset?
I'm sitting on the fence with trigger finger itching to get a new 1.8 SSD...
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Jan 24, 2009
I have read a lot of forums and discussions about the Mac battery. The normal life should be around 300 Charges. Mine has already more than 722 and is about 2 years old, but still has 100% life with sometimes dropping to 96%.Has somebody else exp. this kind of long life of the battery ? How long can a battery actually last ?
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Mar 22, 2009
Battery life on my MacBook Air (1.86/SSD) has dropped to less than two hours (for casual web browsing).When new, I got more than 4 hours on a full charge.Also, the battery meter seems to be way off.The machine shuts off with the meter showing 40% remaining. I've tried several full charge - discharge cycles.System information shows battery health to be good.
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Jul 12, 2009
My four and a half pound MacBook, even with wonderful battery life is too much to bear. So is the thought of using Windows 98. Otherwise I'd buy a Netbook.
How many hours of word processing can I expect from the latest version of the MBA?
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Aug 5, 2009
How many people have actually got 7 hours battery out of their MBP?
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Sep 4, 2009
I have a late 2008 15" macbook pro, 2.8ghz. Since I got it, it's been running fairly hot at times. It's summer right now and pretty warm here, but it's idling at about 67 degrees. I've seen it get a lot higher, up to around 85. Is this normal? Does it need a trip into the apple store?
My other problem is battery life. I'm only getting about 2.5 - 3.5 hours with the lower end video card, just using safari, and I don't know if that's normal or not.
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Sep 30, 2009
I have the 13" MacBook Pro with the beefiest processor and a 500GB HDD. When I bought the machine, I quizzed the guy at the store about a couple of things. In particular I asked about the battery life. He told me apple claims that this machine should have 7 hours of battery life when doing light tasks, but that he personally was able to squeeze out over 8 hours of battery life with simple web browsing.
My problem is that I can barely get 3,5 hours worth of batterylife out of the machine before it gives up the ghost. And this is with the backlight on the display turned down to 1/3 of full brightness. And all I'm doing is browsing text webpages with no flash. Is this normal? Or have I simply overlooked some basic power option that I need to toggle?
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Oct 3, 2009
I turned my computer on at 4:05pm. I made sure it was charged to 100% before I unplugged the power supply. It is now 5:15pm and my battery is already at 14%.The ONLY programs I have had running are:- iTunes - Safari - Firefox (not being used, just on)Other things to note:- Energy Saver set to: "Better battery life" instead of "Higher Performance". - Display brightness set at 13/16I'm getting less than 1.5 hours of battery life while just searching the internet and listing to music.
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Mar 2, 2010
I have a 3.5 year old macbook pro. Seems that when I'm using the battery, which is rare, the mbp shutsdown when the battery gets down between 86-89% charged. When plugged into the wall no problems.
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