Reduced battery life after battery calibration

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I am new to Macs and one major reason I bought one for college was the great battery life of the 2009 MBP's. I was extremely pleased initially with the seven to eight hour* usage while browsing the internet using wireless and listening to music with headphones. Battery life is really important to me so decided to calibrate my battery after reading about regular battery maintenance. After I calibrated my batter, however, my maximum run time now is around 5.5 hours with no apps running. Rarely do I ever see the battery life display show 7+ hours anymore. My reduced battery life was noticed before my upgrade to 10.6.

*Battery times are taken from the battery life meter

Other battery life maintenance tips would be helpful too; for instance, I've heard conflicting arguments about leaving laptops charging overnight.

Thanks to anyone who can help
 
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Your Mac's Specs
iMac 27" Late 2013 - 3.5GHz Core i7 - 32GB RAM - GTX 780< 4GB GPU
I ran into the same issue with my White MacBook (2.1GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD). I followed the Apple guidelines exactly.

Prior to the calibration (depending on what I was doing) It would show (and I believe I'd get) 4.5 to 5+ hours of battery life. After calibration it's usually less than 4 hours, 3.5 if I'm lucky, even when it's idle. ???
 
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It was probably just mis-calibrated before and "thought" it contained more juice than it did.
So while the battery may 'appear worse' after calibration, it's not.

Regards...;D
 
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Your Mac's Specs
13" 2.26ghz Unibody Macbook Pro 2gb Ram
Hm.. I experienced the exact same thing also and mine is just 6 days old. Prior to calibration it showed it as having 5525 mAh but after calibration it decreased significantly to around 5300, but it didn't stop there, it kept dropping and went down to 5199 mAh all in about 2 days. I took my Macbook Pro 13" to the Apple store and they replaced the battery for me becaues they said 97% was within specs but mine was at 95%, but I don't think it's any better.

I'll have to wait and see within the next day or two to see if I experience the same thing.

And the thing is, it's not even that it's "showing less" or "showing actual" because of it possibly being "mis-calibrated", I actually got less operating time on the Macbook after calibrating, and even with the new replaced battery, I'm not getting the same usage time as I did when I first charged the Macbook out of box and used it.
 
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Oh and significant drop in usage time as in, prior to calibration with no applications running and the screen set at what it was default on BRAND new start up, it showed near 7 hour 30 minute operating time after the FULL charge. After calibration, at full charge it states that operating time is at around 5 hours 50 minutes. I don't think that's exactly "normal" being that I technically lost an hour and 40 minutes of use time and it being way below the advertised useful time [and I know the stated use time isn't under much load]
 

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