Lower Battery Life on Snow Leopard?

My 13" MBP seems to have a slower battery life with the new OS......anyone else notice this?

Maybe you could try an SMC reset, I've heard that it helped some people...

Macbook or Macbook Pro:

1. turn computer off, if on.
2. disconnect AC adapter & remove battery
3. hold powerbutton for 5 seconds and release button.
4. reconnect AC adapter and battery.
5. press powerbutton to restart.

Hope this helps...

that would help if I could remove the battery.....the new one is non-removeable......but thanks!

Ah darnit... you're right... my bad

Looked it up, but there seems to be no way, to do this on the newer MBP's.
I'll keep this thread updated if I find one, if nobody else does...;D

Z mannn R2 said:

My 13" MBP seems to have a slower battery life with the new OS......anyone else notice this?

Click to expand...

Are you sure...how closely were you monitoring your battery life before Snow Leopard???

Otherwise..."seems" type measurements tend to be very inaccurate.;D

- Nick

Other people have complained about the same thing, so, I'm not saying he is, but he may have a point.

Sur3Mac said:

Other people have complained about the same thing, so, I'm not saying he is, but he may have a point.

Click to expand...

Very true...but unless we are talking significantly shorter battery runtimes (like 20%+ shorter runtime) it's a difficult thing to verify without having before & after battery life/runtime values.

As a lot of us know...the tasks we do on a laptop can greatly influence battery runtime...so battery runtimes can vary greatly.

- Nick

But we are talking significantly, take a look.

I have not noticed this at all with my MacBook Pro - the battery life between this machine on 10.5 and 10.6 has been negligible at most. I have noticed that when I boot into Windows (Boot Camp), the battery life is significantly reduced (under 2 hours vs. ~5 hours in OS X).

Sur3Mac said:

But we are talking significantly, take a look.

Click to expand...

Two points:

1. The thread that you linked from "MacTalk.com":

- one person in the thread said that they thought they were getting shorter battery life with Snow Leopard.
- one person said that they didn't notice a difference
- one person thought that their battery life got better with Snow Leopard

I would hardly consider this linked thread conclusive quantitative evidence that Snow Leopard causes shorter battery life/runtime in laptops.

2. In this thread (on Mac-Forums.com) we are primarily discussing the situation with the original poster...not other individual users across the internet.. The conditions that lead to shorter or longer battery life can vary greatly depending on how a person uses their laptop when running on battery power.

So it's VERY difficult to compare two or more users "shorter battery life issue with 10.6"...when we really don't know how each person is using their laptops.

My main point in this particular thread is...the original poster said that they feel that they "seem" to have shorter battery life/runtime after upgrading to Snow Leopard.

"Seem"...it not really a good measure of battery life. We would need to have a battery life test performed before & after upgrading to Snow Leopard...with the test conditions being exactly the same with 10.5, and then with 10.6.

I'm not disagreeing that it's possible that battery runtimes may be shorter after folks updated to Snow Leopard...we just need some "numbers" based data vs. seems like "feelings".

- Nick

Battery life for me, is more or less the same as it was before the upgrade.

Same here, battery life is about the same.

Any increased disk I/O? System logs reveal anything interesting? I only ask because I ran into a problem with a daemon constantly stopping and restarting shortly after the upgrade. Turned out to be an incompatible software package that was just draining resources like crazy.

Battery life has been reduced by I 'estimate' 40% on my laptop. I have 15" MPB unibody 2.53Ghz (Oct 2008) - before estimated battery time was 4.30hr on a full charge with no applications running.

I could safely use this for wifi/browsing/pages for 4 hours in starbucks no problems. I upgraded to 10.6 and now I get around 3.00hr on a full charge no applications running. The battery is DEAD in around 2.30hr.. I've tried the battery reset mentioned above with no difference.

I've checked to see if there are any new tasks that seem to be taking up CPU time or HDD but nothing coming up. The computer idles just the same but with signifantly reduced battery time.

I'm considering taking it to the Genius bar because it's frankly abysmal to get that much of a reduction!

Procedure with the Macbooks with the battery cannot be removed

MacBook Air and MacBook Pro (Late 2008 and later)

1. If the computer is on, turn it off by choosing Shutdown from the Apple () menu.
2. Connect the power adapter to a working power source.
3. On the built-in keyboard, press (left) Shift-Control-Option along with the power button once.
4. Wait 5 seconds and press the power button to start the computer.

Note: You must use the keys on the left side of the built-in keyboard.

You should only perform an SMC reset when the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2009) has been properly shutdown. This prevents issues from occurring to the file system.

While the power adapter does not need to be connected to reset the SMC, it may be necessary in situations where the battery needs charging or if the computer has been without power for an extended period of time. You can also visually check the SMC reset by observing the LED on the adapter. It will momentarily turn off as the SMC resets.

I can confirm this issue, I installed snowleopard (clean install) on my unibody MBP. Before the install a full charge was well over 3 hours (closer to 4) after the install with no running apps it told me a full charge was less than 2! I did the SMC reset with 1:30 battery life left today (at 80%) and as soon as I booted up I have now got 3 hours again, without connecting a power supply. So it does seem to be an issue for some people, and since I did a clean install it is not always incompatible programs or daemons.

I would take it into the Apple store, because 40% less battery life is HUGE!!

I think that my battery life is better now.

Good luck

I'm not sure if I'm just the one in a thousand type of case but, my Unibody Macbook Pro 13" experienced battery life loss as well as operating time loss after calibration. Mine had SL pre-loaded and I followed the instructions for battery calibration perfectly. When I was using the laptop to drain the battery, I noticed at 100% it showed Current Battery at 5525 mAh and time remaining was around 7 hours and 30 minutes [absolutely nothing running as I hadn't even loaded anything onto the computer].

Post calibration Current Battery ended up reaching 5199 and time remaining at full charge around 6 hours? So I went to the Apple store and they said they could replace the battery for me but not exchange the laptop for a new one , even though the Genius Bar rep said that they could replace the battery "because it was so new". After battery replacement the Current Battery was a LITTLE better, and went up to around 5400 but it still keeps fluctuating downwards. But this time, it said Full Charge was 97% and not 100% and time remaining at that point was 5 hours 50 minutes or so.

I DID try the SMC reset according to the unibody SMC reset procedures but I didn't notice any difference at all with the battery time remaining.

Should I just take it back again and try to get them to replace the whole unit for a new one? I bought this Macbook Pro on 9/8/09 and I started using it late at night on 9/9/09 and have had it on (running) only 3 or 4 times MAX so far.

7:50 is enough for me! Jk, I get about 6 hours when just doing web browsing, and about 5 on youtube.

Hm.. then I guess there IS something wrong with my Macbook? Are you getting around 6 hours web browsing with the screen dimmed all the way before it goes full dark?

Oh and what is your current battery capacity and could you take a screen shot of it as well? Thanks!