Macbook Pro battery life

Hi there!

I've had my macbook pro for about 6 months and have never had a problem with it.
It's my first mac and I'm still getting used to it, but the last few nights I've been noticing my battery life isn't as good as it used to be.
This was one of the reasons I chose this particular macbook because it had a 7 hour battery life and that was great for taking it to school with me.
Now I'm noticing when I take it off the charger, the battery life is only about 2.5 hours.
I have tried letting it run fully flat and then charging it full again, but now I have no idea what else I can do..

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help

I feel sure this has been written about 1000 times here, but here's a brief summary:

1. UP TO seven hours of battery life. Depends on what you are doing. Watching a DVD, for example, will cut that RIGHT down.

2. Coconut Battery. This is a free tool that will tell you if there's an actual defect.

3. Batteries have a limited number of "cycles" before they start to go bad. The new (sealed) batteries are generally thought to be good for 1000 cycles. The older (removable ones) were less than half that.

Post a screenshot of the results you get with Coconut Battery (command-shift-4 then spacebar, then click). We'll let you know what the results tell us. If there is a defect, take it to the nearest Apple Authorised Dealer (and not "Bob's PC Shack"). At 6 months old, it's still under warranty.

Thanks, I didn't have time to sort through thousand of threads before I found one that was useful.

Thank you for you help. Yes, I know it is UP TO 7 hours battery life, but a drop from what it usually was, around 6/7 to 2.5 is a big drop.

I will have a look at the link, thank you very much

Here is the screen shot, and thanks for teaching me how to take a screen shot

That seems strange. The battery looks like it is in pretty good condition. You've only gone through about 1/6th of the batteries load cycle.

I suggest going with the advice Chas gave you and take it in to an apple retailer. The battery shouldn't be performing that poorly with the smaller number cycles its been through.

It's normal bro. Don't be upset too much about that. Enjoy your Mac

Thanks, I will give apple a call and probably take it in tomorrow

I just want to make sure everything is working with it

Uh... battery life is highly dependent on usage. Since the OP hasn't mentioned anywhere what they're actually doing on their machine when they notice 2.5 hours of battery life, I am extremely reluctant to suggest that taking it into a store is in any way necessary.

Really, I'm not stupid.
I would not have wasted peoples time if I had been playing a dvd or listening to music while doing 50 other things when I had been noticing only 2.5 hours battery life.

What I am doing is nothing that should be draining the battery. Maybe msn and facebook at most, and this is right after I had taken it off the charger.

I called mac support and they have also suggested I bring it in so someone can physically see it.

Thanks

Yeah, your Coconut Battery specs look perfectly normal, so its best to have someone at Apple check it out. Glad to help, good luck!

leah3119 said:

Really, I'm not stupid.

Click to expand...

No offense, but I've heard that one before. Have you even opened Activity Monitor to check if something's going awry? Spotlight indexing? mdworker?

I don't need to.
For the first 6 months I've had my computer I could use msn and facebook without draining the battery, and suddenly I'm only getting a few hours battery life whilst doing the same activities.. something is not adding up.
Nothing has changed at all, therefore, as I and a few others have suspected, including the gentleman i spoke to from Apple support, there might be a problem.