OS X :: MacBook Pro Battery Time Variation
May 5, 2010
I am totally new to macbook. After being a very supportive Windows user I finally decided to change that and get the Macbook pro 13". I was trying out the battery and wondering there a bit. I charged it fully and when I started running the mac on battery the remaining time showed around 10 hours, then it would start jumping, suddenly it went to 9:30 and further down. The lowest within half an hour use was 4:30 and right now it's up at 8:50 again. I was wondering whether this kind of "jumping" is normal or whether just my macbook is doing that? I am really happy with my decision so far, I love the macbook and I am sure while trying it out in the next week or so I will come up here with some more questions!
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Jun 13, 2012
I have a 27" iMac with a near top configuration. I use it for a large part of the time in a business context, and for that I use Illustrator and Photoshop CS5 extensively. After a difficult conversion from WindowsLand - my fault, I'm sure - I'm now a very enthusiastic Apple customer. The rest of the time is email, on the Web, hosting a large family photo library, music and all the usual stuff.Â
I also have an iPad 1st generation, which I use for email and as a storage for my digital photographs when I go on long haul vacations, two or three times a year [family live abroad]. While the iPad is great, it doesn't have ethernet, and not all places have WiFi. Also, photo management and linking to social media sites is a bit of a kludge. It doesn't run MS Office for Mac either.Â
So I am considering buying a laptop for use when I'm not in front of the iMac. I have ruled out the 15" MacBook Pro on size and portability grounds [and the new retina model on cost], so I'm looking at the 13" MacBook Pro, primarily because I had assumed the Air would not be sufficently powerful or capable for my needs. Now I'm in a quandary. Which might be the best option - MBP or MBA?Â
I like the MBP because it is upgradeable, whereas the Air isn't. However, I'm not replaceing the iMac with the laptop, simply wishing to be able to do a small amount of support work for my colleagues when I'm away. If I buy the best configuration for my needs to start with, why would I need to upgrade it? In addition, both the MBA and MBA can provide the ethernet that the iPad can't [albeit with an add-on for the Air] and can deal with the output from my digital cameras better than the iPad can.Â
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Aug 17, 2010
calibrating my battery for the first time this morning. i just opened my macbook pro to see that the time left icon jumps every minute. it goes from 8:50 to 12:38 to 6:54 to 11:37 to 7:40! and now it went from 8:45 to 9:19! the percentage remaining is consistent and correct but the time left is way out of whack! sorry for the slang! now it went from 9:19 to 9:11 then 8:47. i have the screen at the lowest brightness, no backlit keyboard, nothing else running except firefox. i wasnt aware that i was supposed to calibrate my battery and its been about 3 months since i bought this. now its at 8:37 now 8:18. this is quite
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Jan 25, 2009
I've had my unibody 2.0 since November. It's always said 5 hours or so when i open it up fully charged. This week it's started fluctuating wildy. While typing this post it's gone from 3 hours 23 mins to 4 hours and five mins....it started at 2 hours....now it's up to 4...very odd. Any ideas on why this has started happening all of the sudden?
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Jul 7, 2009
I have had my macbook for just 6 months....at the beginning it was perfect with a very good battery life.Now at 99% charge (as it refuses to finish charge to 100%) It now says 10:00 where the battery time is and last less than 30mins.
Also its charge capacity is JUST 708 !!!!It was over 4000 just 6 months ago.Im sure my battery is on its last legs, anybody know if I am entitled to a free one?
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh):708
Fully charged:No
Charging:Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh):708
Health Information:
Cycle count:110
Condition:Check Battery
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Nov 24, 2010
What's the best thing to do with the MBA out of the box? Should I use it and drain the battery to zero or not even turn it on and just charge it?
I want to treat it nicely from day one ...
Also, on the same topic of treating it nicely, do you recommend a screen or keyboard protector? I had a keyboard protector on my PowerBook G4 (iskin). While it kept the keyboard nice and clean, I suppose it didn't give me the best experience I could have had with the keyboard itself. I now realize that I can't really read the keys because the protector is so dirty.
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May 17, 2009
I routinely put my Macbook to sleep with a full-charge at night, then unplug it (the power cord doesn't reach where I keep my computer at night). When I wake it up, it generally has 93% of a charge left. This has never happened and I am wondering if it is time to replace the battery.
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Jun 28, 2010
The battery time on my Macbook Pro 15" goes from one time to another in a matter of minutes. I fully charged the battery after it had been drained. This is what I mean by fluctuating:
11:23am-11:28am (5m)
7h51m, 5h54m, 6h57m, 6h16m, 5h29m, 6h38m, 5h53m, 6h29m, 6h9m, 6h13m
11:29-11:34 (5m)
6h39m, 6h36m, 6h4m, 6h8m, 6h49m, 5h52m, 6h30m, 6h0m, 5h43m, 6h30m
Apple states that it should get 8-9 hours on a full charge and mine gets 6h15m. It's only 10mos old.
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Jul 16, 2010
I've been meaning to calibrate my computer for some time now, but it seems like a wee hassle. I ask you this: must I calibrate my battery? Will it in any way affect my battery life during one cycle? What about the overall life of the battery in terms of number of cycles?
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Sep 12, 2009
I'm in to buy a second hand Macbook unibody - the one that didn't exist for very long, until it was slightly upgraded and rebranded as Macbook Pro. 13,3".
Differences I've found so far add up to these:
45 watt changeable vs 60 watt built-in battery
2.0 Mhz vs 2.26 Mhz
- vs Firewire 800 and SD card slot
One question would be - how much does the battery time differ between 45 and 60 watt?
Then I heard that the screen might have been updated too, something that for me makes more value than all the above. A quote comparing the white Macbook ("WhiteBook") with the unibody Macbook pro: "While both machines have 13.3-inch glossy displays, the unibody has also been upgraded to a higher-quality screen from AU Optronics with 60 percent greater color gamut, another advantage over the WhiteBook."
Does the unibody Macbook have the same screen as the white macbook, or does it have the same as the unibody Macbook pro - or something in-between? Does someone know of a comparison between the two?
I'll do a lot of graphics - picture editing - so it's important for me.
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Jan 6, 2010
In the coming days I am supposed to be in delivery of my new MacBook Pro and was wondering if it is better to just use the built in battery to power on my MacBook Pro for the first time and just power it off the battery until the battery is fully discharged? Or should I power my MacBook Pro from the power adaptor?
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Apr 20, 2010
My new MBP has 5 hours of battery when doing light web browsing at medium brightness. Only 2-3 hours when playing low res youtube clips, and 6:45 hours with all apps and wifi turned off and screen brightness at minimum.
When I first turned on the MBP I charged it to 100% and then discharged it down to 0. Is this battery life normal? What happened to 8-9 hours with wifi and web browsing? I can't even get 7 hours with everything off!
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Jun 7, 2010
I have a rev B MBA, which is gorgeous but I have found myself using it less than any other Laptop I've ever had and it is simply due to two reasons:
- Heat, pretty much anything except simple browsing raise the heat
- Battery time, simply lousy (including charge time)
Have had it for a while, 14 months, but at this point I have started looking at the 13 and 15 inch versions as replacements down the road. I thought it would make a great compliment to the imac but due to the limitations above I use it less and less. If only they had added a fraction of an inch of thickness to allow better heat handling and more battery.
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May 1, 2012
I just bought Mac Air 11" three weeks ago. I noticed that the average standby time of the battery is only three hours. I need answer on this because it ain't normal at all.I have to recharge the battery 3-4 times in a day.
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Dec 17, 2010
I'm quite hooked on these little external batteries. I have one that I carry that gives my Droid a few extra charges if I'm out all day, a lifesaver.
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Feb 17, 2008
Does any of your macbook airs take super long to recharge? Mine was at 33% and it took almost 6hrs. I already tried to re-calibrate the battery and did the PMU reset thingy
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Feb 22, 2009
ever since i got my macbook around a month ago, my battery hasn't lasted more than 2 hours at the most. i researched and realized i should calibrate the battery, that didnt do anything. then i downloaded istat and it shows everything as fine. i think i got a messed up battery. do you think they will replace my battery if i take it in?
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Jun 27, 2009
Late 2008 refurb Macbook Pro, 2.53ghz, Windows 7 RC (therefore forced to use the 9600 at all times). According to this report, the MBP got around 3&1/2hrs of run time with a dimmed screen and watching videos. From a full charge, I start browsing the internet (no videos at all), and my battery reading read as follows
91% 1hr, 16mins
90% 1hr, 20mins
89% 1hr, 24mins
87% 1hr, 23mins
Not only were the readings all over the place, but even from a full near charge I wasn't even getting an estimate of 2hrs, while Apple advertised 4 for the late 2008 model, and the review I linked to says they got 3&1/2. Do I have a bad battery, or does simply running the 9600 reduce the battery life by such a drastic amount? I have already calibrated my battery following the guide on the Apple website.
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May 4, 2010
2010 MBP 15" i5 running 10.6.3. Time machine doesn't seem to care about the fact that the notebook is running on battery power. I keeps on performing backups. I've tried restarting, enabling and disabling Time Machine....nothing seems to work... Isn't time machine supposed to delay backups when the laptop is on battery power..?
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Aug 16, 2010
I was doing my first-ever Time Machine back-up tonight. I have about 130GB of data. About a half hour into it, my battery died and when I rebooted the computer from sleep mode, Time Machine said that the back-up had failed. I deleted the initial back-up in the 'Time Machine Back-Ups' folder, but it still says that I have 40GB less on my external hard drive than I actually do. My external hard drive is 300GB, so I should have 170GB left, but I only have 130GB.
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Mar 26, 2012
Is there a separate battery for the clock? My 4 year olc MacBook doesn't seem to be keeping time anymore.
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May 27, 2012
I have read about Macbook Pro batteries from apple.com. I use to talk to many people and ask about batteries which brought me upto this confusion. Well, my question is, should i charge macbook pro when it's battery is completely drained or it's okay to charge at any time as long as it's not at 100%? For example, I wanna start charging it while its 60% and make it to 100% or Don't charge it until battery reaches to 5 or 10 percent.
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Jun 4, 2012
Battery takes a long time to recharge on this 3 year old Mac Book Pro--looking for ways to speed up?
Info:
MacBook Pro
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Jun 21, 2012
Why can't I display time remaining on my battery with the new retina pro?
Info:
MacBook Pro with Retina display, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Oct 28, 2010
I am new (sort of) to owning a Mac, I bought my macbook pro a couple days ago, so far I havent used it much for other than surfing the net. My question is regarding the Battery time remaining indicator, first of all it changes alot, so i never truly know how much time I have left. Is this normal? It can say anywhere from 3-6 hours left when I am at 90% battery. Usually at 90% battery it says I have about 4.5 - 5 hour left. I thought I was supposed to get up to ten hours of battery? The percent indicator seems to go down fairly fast like 1% every few minutes. Is this Normal? Should I take my macbook over to the apple store to be checked out?
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Mar 24, 2008
Exactly as the title says - is there a program out there that can track how long my MBP is running when i run it off of battery power? As we all know the power usage varies depending on what you're doing on the computer, and I don't tend to do any one thing for hours on end. I know on my windows PC i used some program that charted on a graph power usage over time until the battery died.
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Mar 4, 2009
I've been seeing all these battery posts and I was just wondering how my batt. usage stacks up with other peoples. I guess posting the health doesn't hurt either. My MBP has been used about 5 and half months, i have 90 cycles and 94% health. Apologies if this thread already exists, blame it on this sites horrible search function.
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May 11, 2010
I just got my first MacBook and just draining the battery for the first time (seems to be something like 5-6 hours while surfing and playing music via the speakers, so far I'm quite happy). But I've noticed that the 330m is running all the time due to Skype. I checked with gfxCardStatus and when I close Skype the battery time increases nearly an hour.
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May 13, 2012
Last night I had a weird experience with my mid-2011 MacBook Pro; I went out to dinner and came back to find the cat had kicked the power cord out, draining the battery. I've had this happen before and wasn't too worried; it's always just restarted after I plugged it back in. This time, however, I plugged it in (getting, perplexingly, a green light on the cord) and nothing happened except for the sleep light slowly flashing; it didn't respond to any pressing on the power button, and the sleep light disappeared if I unplugged the cord. The battery test button on the side got one flashing light (meaning, I believe, a dead battery), which also didn't work if the computer was unplugged.
I left it plugged in while I hunted for info on the problem and about an hour later had just decided that I was going to have to take it in to the Genius Bar when it suddenly booted up. The cord light turned orange and it proceeded to fully recharge over the next two hours. Is this normal behavior after a battery drain? Should I be concerned? Is it worth taking the computer in to get the battery checked, or some other element of the comp? (some of the things I looked at were talking about the logic board, which is not a happy thought) iStat Pro claims the battery is at 41% health, 111 cycles, which I would think would mean it has some life in it yet.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7)
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Jun 20, 2012
The battery indicator on the top menu bar on my other MBP's gives 3 selectable options for display: Icon Only, Percentage, and Time Remaining. My new MBP retina only has 'Icon' and 'Percentage'. You can still see time remaining by clicking on the battery icon manually.Â
Applecare said "they must have removed it for that new version of the MBP, you could always try reinstalling the O/S from scratch just to be sure".Â
Under Energy Saver the only option is to 'show battery status' on the top bar.Â
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