% user in the activity monitor. What does it mean ?

Hi all,

Lately my battery life has been slashed by two, and I think it is probably a software problem (the guy I talked to at apple thinks so too)

Something I've noticed in my activity monitor is that the number next to "% user" is vey high (between 50 and 60) and I think this is why my battery life is so low. Does anyone know what the value "% user" means ?

Screenshot of my activity monitor : Untitled - Minus
Thanks for reading

It may or may not be excessively high. What are you running? Sort your processes by CPU usage and work from there.

dekox said:

Something I've noticed in my activity monitor is that the number next to "% user" is vey high (between 50 and 60) and I think this is why my battery life is so low. Does anyone know what the value "% user" means ?

Click to expand...

For what it's worth...my "% User" is currently between 16-18% (with only Safari & Mail open).

What I would suggest is:

- restart your computer
- don't launch any other applications other than "Activity Monitor"
- check the "% User"
- let us know what the value is

This way we have a "base value" to start from.

- Nick

p.s. I just started playing an online game...and % User jumped to 55% while launching the game...and 35-42% while playing.

Wanted to add this link as well:

MPG - Mac Performance 101: Cores, Processes, Memory - Observing system performance with Activity Monitor

Notice in the graphic (around the middle of the article) is % User is 93%! Basically is seems...the busier the computer...the higher the % User.

So when running a laptop on battery power...the fewer the processes you have going on at the same the better (in other words)...doing just one thing might be better (given your battery runtime cut in half experience).

In other words:

- listening to mp3's
- watching a video
- playing an internet game
- downloading a file
- "tweeting" a friend
- etc.

Probably isn't great for max. battery life!

- Nick

50-60 without anything else running.
This appeared right after installing an all in one printer from Canon. Doing some further research, I discovered somebody else who had the same problem because of a wifi printer's driver. I think this is probably the problem. Does anybody know how I can uninstall it, knowing that I don't have the install disk?

Yeah, it was the printer driver. put the canon file in library/printer restarted, and now it works like a charm again. Seriously, how can they make us install a crappy driver like that ? And how am I going to use my printer now ?

dekox said:

Yeah, it was the printer driver. put the canon file in library/printer restarted, and now it works like a charm again. Seriously, how can they make us install a crappy driver like that ? And how am I going to use my printer now ?

Click to expand...

Awesome...thanks for letting us know that the printer driver was the problem...and removing it was the solution!

- Nick