You got a 17" MBP C2D?

Dublinstiofán

Have a quick favour to ask of somebody with a 17" Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.33Ghz.

How long are you getting out of your battery when its fully charged?

Could one or two of you maybe take a screen grab of the battery information in the power section of 'about this mac'. I just want to compare performance. Mine has only gone through 67 cycles of the charge being fully depleted and the battery is performing terribly in my opinion. Apple did recall some of the C2D batteries but i thought the 17"ers were not effected.

Its well under a year old and i'm not at all happy with the time i'm getting out of the battery at all. On one occasion i got just over an hour which doesn't sound right for an almost brand new machine.

If anybody has any advice in how to optimise the charge id appreciate it.
Something beyond the obvious of turn bluetooth off when your not using it etc.

Many thanks
steve

K.O.Kiki

• You should not let your battery run down all the way to 0% constantly, since that kills it really quickly. Recharge around 30-40%.
• Go to System Preferences, and choose Energy Saving mode for battery-mode under Power (iirc). Also, consider turning down your screen's brightness.
• The battery will go down faster if you're using lots of CPU power -- there's apps & widgets to check this, can't remember any atm. Or just open Activity Monitor if you feel it's chugging (lol)
• Using CDs & DVDs is another battery-eater.

That's the basics; just in case you forgot

Cabaal

iStat Pro is a very useful widget, http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/istatpro.html

Tells CPU, Memory usage etc and battery charge/cycle info

Dublinstiofán

K.O.Kiki wrote:

• You should not let your battery run down all the way to 0% constantly, since that kills it really quickly. Recharge around 30-40%.
• Go to System Preferences, and choose Energy Saving mode for battery-mode under Power (iirc). Also, consider turning down your screen's brightness.
• The battery will go down faster if you're using lots of CPU power -- there's apps & widgets to check this, can't remember any atm. Or just open Activity Monitor if you feel it's chugging (lol)
• Using CDs & DVDs is another battery-eater.

That's the basics; just in case you forgot

Thats great thanks guys i'll try these later on. I do let the charge fully run out sometimes but thats only because the time i get out of it is feck all. I must time how long i actually get out of it in one cycle. It says like three hours but jumps down in like 10, 15 minute blocks.

I'll download that widget too and have a look at that later on, thanks Cabaal

Can anybody do me a screen grab. One thing in my list appears wrong and i want to just see if its the same on them all or whether there is a battery fault.

Cabaal

I'm curious since you haven't actually posted it, how long are you actually getting out of the battery?

Dublinstiofán

Cabaal wrote:

I'm curious since you haven't actually posted it, how long are you actually getting out of the battery?

I haven't actually timed it yet but i think its in the region of 1hr 40 mins or so which isn't nearly good enough.

I'll try calibrate the battery later on and see if that improves things and time how long i get while using it like i usually do.

I noticed that that one of the things in the power list is at '-' something our other so id love to find out if thats normal. You got a Macbook Pro Cabaal? Any chance you could check if there is a minus anywhere in that list?

Just so you know what i'm looking for its the battery information. Same as the screen grap on this page:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305405

Cabaal

Dublinstiof&#225 wrote: »

I haven't actually timed it yet but i think its in the region of 1hr 40 mins or so which isn't nearly good enough.

You got a Macbook Pro Cabaal? Any chance you could check if there is a minus anywhere in that list?

Sounds abit sort alright, but again depends what your doing with it when it comes to battery.

Not sadly I only have a MacBook...couldn't justify a MacBook Pro at the time, I'm sure somebody with a MBP will post what your looking for shortly.

ZENER

I have a MBP 15" and the realistic battery life is about 2 hours with Airport and Bluetooth on and screen brightness at about 90% using Photoshop, Safari, Aperture and with 1.5GB memory.

I also have a 17" Powerbook which gives a similar life under similar conditions. Airport and the Bluetooth Mighty Mouse have a big impact on battery life as do cpu intensive apps like FinalCut or Photoshop.

The expected life shown on the Finder bar after starting up is without all these things running and the actual life you get @ 100mins sounds reasonable for that size screen. What apps are you running ? Playing DVDs - recording DV in iMovie or FC or ripping DVDs will eat the battery.

ZEN

Dublinstiofán

ZENER wrote:

I have a MBP 15" and the realistic battery life is about 2 hours with Airport and Bluetooth on and screen brightness at about 90% using Photoshop, Safari, Aperture and with 1.5GB memory.

I also have a 17" Powerbook which gives a similar life under similar conditions. Airport and the Bluetooth Mighty Mouse have a big impact on battery life as do cpu intensive apps like FinalCut or Photoshop.

The expected life shown on the Finder bar after starting up is without all these things running and the actual life you get @ 100mins sounds reasonable for that size screen. What apps are you running ? Playing DVDs - recording DV in iMovie or FC or ripping DVDs will eat the battery.

ZEN

Surfing the net with airport no bluetooth and using just Safari with 2GB RAM i get about an hour and a half if i'm lucky. I have only done like 67 cycles.

I think there is something wrong with the battery and hence this is why i'm desperately trying to get the screen grab from another standard MBP 17"

The reason i'm worried is.

A) I downloaded Mac coconut battery widget and it says that the capacity of the battery when i got it was around 5500 miliamps (not sure if this is the correct measure as i dont have the mac infront of me but you get the idea) and now the capacity is 6700 miliamps

The amperage in the power section of 'about this mac' is at minus 1700miliamps

This looks incorrect to me and i just wanted to see if everybody elses' is the same.

Can Anybody tell me. Even someone with a 15" MBP

Thanks

ZENER

I'll get my MBP and PB out in a while and grab those screens for you.

Have you checked to see if your battery qualifies for a replacement under the scheme involving the exploding batteries a while back ?

Mine qualified and I got a new battery within 2 days from Apple and they didn't take the old on back. Now I have 2 practically new batteries ! Happy days - I just have to remember not to bring the dodgy one onto a plane :rolleyes:

ZEN

ZENER

From a 15" MBP CD 1.83GHz:

ZEN

ZENER

From a 17" Powerbook G4:

ZEN

Dublinstiofán

Thanks a million Zener thats exactly what i needed. Appears to be similar enough. One problem i did notice is that the remaining charge capacity is larger than the full charge capacity, sounds like its impossible to me.

What you think? Could this be the source of the problem. The batterys overcharging somehow. Would imagine that you can only fill a battery so much, like a jug. when its full it should stop charging. Or Maybe its gonna overflow and explode.:eek:

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 5691
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 6600