Snow Leopard - decreased battery life

Hello,

I upgraded to SL the day after it was released. The procedure went fine, with a couple of minor glitches like my printer not having proper drivers any more, but that's all been resolved.

What isn't resolved is that since the upgrade, my battery life SUCKS. I can't step away from a power cord for longer than 1/2 hour! And when it dies - with no alarm or other advance notice, mind you - the monitor indicates there's still 80% remaining (verified by 3rd party software).

I've tried resetting the PRAM & NVRAM as per Apple's instructions here: Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM and I've also reset the PMU as per Apple's instructions here: Resetting PowerBook and iBook Power Management Unit (PMU). I don't have any rogue apps sucking up juice, and everything would be great if I could just get this issue resolved without downgrading to Leopard.

Any ideas?

You can try recalibrating the battery again.

Overall SL hasn't been known to cause battery issues, so it must
be a software thing.

Regards

I agree 100% that it's a software issue because I was having zero problems with the battery before the upgrade. In Apple's support forums there have been quite a few other people who have experienced a problem like this since upgrading, but the vast majority of those have been solved by using the procedures I already related and there hasn't been any further meaningful discussion on the issue for about a week.

Using Apple's calibration method found here Apple Portables: Calibrating your computer's battery for best performance I am unable to precisely follow the directions because the computer isn't behaving in the expected manner, so I've actually avoided trying this. I don't get any alarm or other warning, and it's not going to sleep - nor is it shutting itself down safely - it simply dies. Rebooting after these incidents is a process that takes FAR longer than a normal boot of the system - about 4-5 minutes compared to 20-30 seconds. So I've been trying to avoid this, as it seems to be very hard on the machine.

However, I appreciate your response, and will give your suggestion a whirl, and try it out today. I should know by the end of the day if the recalibration works.

Betty

No go. After recalibration, I hit 76% and died without a sputter.

It's gonna take some time to look for it, but have you tried the latest Battery-Update yet?

I found the updater and checked my system. Everything looked OK except the firmware version (0110), so I ran the updater. The updater did not make changes to my system.

You could go back to Leopard and see if the problem persists. If it does your battery is going bad. If not, SL is the problem.

I ended up in the Mac Store yesterday, and it turns out my battery was bad. So problem solved. Thanks to those who responded.