Not getting promised battery life

sarkozy

I'm simply not getting the advertised 7-8 hours from my new MacBook Pro. I've scoured the web and happened upon two recommendations: (1) calibrate the battery, which I've done, and (2) install gfxCardStatus 2.1 which seems to manage use of the power-hungry graphics card to better effect. But the battery is still well-dodge.

Currently Bluetooth is off, sound is off and I'm running Mail, Firefox and MS Word, and the screen is turned down to the third brightness level. I'm currently getting 5:22, but on average, I get 3:30.

What are you guys' experiences?

sarkozy

OK, one interesting thing ... I switched from Firefox to Safari and used gfxCardStatus to switch to 'Integrated' graphics and things have improved somewhat.

Sad Professor

How long you get really depends on your usage and what apps and other processes you have running. Some apps like to hog the CPU. Install iStat Pro (or check Activity Monitor) and get used to checking your background processes for misbehaving apps or rogue processes. I would also recommend uninstalling Flash as it is very heavy on battery life. Lower the brightness on the illuminated keyboard as well.

And I wouldn't pay too much attention to the estimated time remaining in the battery menu. That will fluctuate constantly.

Colonel Panic

Anything that makes the dedicated graphics card kick in, so anything that uses OpenGL directly or indirectly via Core Animation will do it and slay battery use in the process.

As you noticed, there are utilities to force integrated graphics only will help.

K.O.Kiki

Flash video can go die in a fire.

sarkozy

Sad Professor wrote: »

How long you get really depends on your usage and what apps and other processes you have running. Some apps like to hog the CPU. Install iStat Pro (or check Activity Monitor) and get used to checking your background processes for misbehaving apps or rogue processes. I would also recommend uninstalling Flash as it is very heavy on battery life. Lower the brightness on the illuminated keyboard as well.

And I wouldn't pay too much attention to the estimated time remaining in the battery menu. That will fluctuate constantly.

One needs Flash and, presumably, there's no alternative!

Colonel Panic

There's a Safari plugin called Click to Flash that lets you manually enable embedded flash if you want. Plus you can view HTML5 video on Youtube these days.

conor.hogan.2

Click to flash is a needed plugin, for all browsers.

Flash is a PITA it even makes the machine run hotter and the fans kick in, it is ridiculous (html5 video is not a huge amount better in those two regards atm)

avalon68

Ive been having a lot of battery issues lately too on a 1yr old MBP. Ive narrowed it down to firefox - its been draining the battery in about 2 h. If I close firefox I get over 5h using multiple different programes, and switching to safari (even though I hate safari! ). Its only been happening over the last 6-8 weeks or so.....I cant remember, but perhaps I updated firefox around then. Its very frustrating as its by far my preferred browser.

Cook my sock

bought a 13" i7 the other day (I know the processor in itself will be a drain) but the fan is constantly going 90, I uninstalled flash but unfortunatly for the likes of watching stuff online its a necessity. bar doing the usual iphone stuff, (turn brightness down, and keyboard in this case) it helps save about 12 minutes, I would get nowhere near the 7 hours it says I can. this is just with facebook, twitter app store app, and home sharing with itunes!

milltown

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Click to flash is a needed plugin, for all browsers.

Flash is a PITA it even makes the machine run hotter and the fans kick in, it is ridiculous (html5 video is not a huge amount better in those two regards atm)

But Flash is a real world, and common, use/problem. It may be a power hog but it is so prevalent that I don't really see why we (mac users or otherwise) should discount it when estimating battery life. Is this what was behind Jobs' long term stance against it? That including Flash would make his battery life claims look less exceptional and thus more PC-like?

I could disable everything on my new MBP and only use it for text editing to exceed the stated battery life but why should I?

I'm not having a go at you, Conor, just a general mini rant. I don't hear car manufacturers stating MPG figures (which are on the optimistic side anyway) and then telling people that they should avoid towns and certain roads at certain times of the day.

Hobbes

I find you don't need flash at all unless you are playing stupid web games. Flash is a horrible piece of software on OSX. It is the only thing that kicks my fans on my MBA.

Alternatives is HTML5 which a lot of sites are switching over to.

From what you describe I'd also drop Firefox and move to chrome. It plays nicer with resources.

There are also other factors that can impact the battery. For example if you don't cycle it correctly. More details here.


http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

Sad Professor

People are free to use Flash if they want. However, despite what some claim, it's not essential. Many people get by just fine without it. It's an antiquated technology that will probably be gradually phased out over the next few years. In the meantime, it's not Apple's responsilbity to double the size of their batteries because Adobe can't get their act together.

But ultimately Flash is one of many things that can have an excessively negative effect of battery life. Apple's current battery estimates are fairly accurate for the most part, but obviously certain things will the drain the battery faster. Watching videos and playing games is going to do that regardless of whether they are in Flash or not.

You don't have to uninstall Flash, just install ClickforFlash and be conscious of how much YouTube/FarmVille/whatever that you spend watching. Flash is mostly ads and other crap you don't need.

conor.hogan.2

milltown wrote: »

That including Flash would make his battery life claims look less exceptional and thus more PC-like?

I could disable everything on my new MBP and only use it for text editing to exceed the stated battery life but why should I?

No, it is because of its and adobes shambolic security and performance (dropped from future mobile devices because it slays battery life, i avoid it on my gs2)

Also manufacturers always do this, my gs2 and all phones claim 3 times battery life because they test on bare minimum usage which is of course not realistic but this is the way it is.

Flash is fairly avoidable, I only click to allow flash when I know it is something I need I even stop using a site sometimes unless I have heard very good things about it if it uses flash. There is only one site (a video podcast network) that I really use flash on anymore that and sometimes on youtube.

sarkozy

Hilariously, I moved to Firefox from Chrome for the exact same reasons on my old MBP - it was hogging battery life AND processor resources. Now it looks like Safari is the way to go.

avalon68

sarkozy wrote: »

Hilariously, I moved to Firefox from Chrome for the exact same reasons on my old MBP - it was hogging battery life AND processor resources. Now it looks like Safari is the way to go.

Well the problems have been a recent development for me so Im hoping the next update will fix it as I really would prefer to stick with firefox as I use the integrated zotero plugin for work and really like it. It seems like something must have drastically changed to knock so many hours off my battery life though......Im not much of a youtuber, and dont play games - mainly just use for work so I dont know if flash is behind my battery loss.