Lion and battery consumption ...... shockingly bad

I have a late 2008 15" MacBookPro ..... spec here ........



since the Lion "upgrade" my battery life has dropped to around 90 mins under "light" usage. I've done the 2 x resets suggested; alt/cmd/p/r reboot and the other one [forgot what it's called]. Still Lion "eats" my battery power

So, anyone got the inside tale of when Apple will sort this?

I must say, for the 1st time in 26 years as a Mac user, I'm pretty much annoyed beyond all possible belief by this shockingly poor low rent muppetational upgrade.

Comments?

What is the "Cycle Count" on your battery?
(Can be found under the "About this Mac" menu item).

Charge Remaining (mAh): 2160
Fully Charged: No
Charging: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4115
Health Information: Cycle Count: 381
Condition: Normal

I had my older battery in that had a 200 cycle count and this behaves the same.

Whether Apple does something about this in the next patch (10.7.2) is anyone's guess. What is illusive about the battery usage and quicker drain with Lion, is that it does not effect all Mac notebook computers.

One thing that will run the battery down somewhat is that Time Machine runs (makes backups) whether or not its external hard drive is attached. It backs up to the internal hard drive and then exports that to the external once it's attached again. You can turn off automatic backups from the Time Machine system preference panel to see if that helps.

Otherwise, the solution to better battery usage is downgrade back to Snow Leopard until Apple addresses the problem. Note: They have yet to acknowledge that there is a problem.

chscag said:

Whether Apple does something about this in the next patch (10.7.2) is anyone's guess. What is illusive about the battery usage and quicker drain with Lion, is that it does not effect all Mac notebook computers.

One thing that will run the battery down somewhat is that Time Machine runs (makes backups) whether or not its external hard drive is attached. It backs up to the internal hard drive and then exports that to the external once it's attached again. You can turn off automatic backups from the Time Machine system preference panel to see if that helps.

Otherwise, the solution to better battery usage is downgrade back to Snow Leopard until Apple addresses the problem. Note: They have yet to acknowledge that there is a problem.

Click to expand...

cheers, Time Machine is always off here as I back up rarely. I'll just drink beer and complain whenever I can get a hearing

Terrible really, I always thought Apple were better than this, I was pleased to roam in Benz territory, but seems I'm now actually running a Ford. great

karlos2000 said:

Terrible really, I always thought Apple were better than this, I was pleased to roam in Benz territory, but seems I'm now actually running a Ford. great

Click to expand...

I know how important battery runtime can be to a laptop user. But it hardly seems fair to give Apple such a bad "wrap" after the Lion upgrade.

I bet that you were very very happy with your MacBook Pro when you were running Snow Leopard (10.6)...so things really shouldn't change 180 degrees so quickly. If there truly is a problem with some Apple laptop models and the Lion upgrade...let's hope it gets resolved (and resolved soon).

This is possibly one of the hazards of being an early adopter of a new OS version. I still haven't upgraded any of my Mac's to Lion (but I've been tempted)!

- Nick

Roll back to Snow Leopard, it really is the only solid solution. I really don't believe that Apple would publicly acknowledge this bug anyway, especially with their emphasis on their portables battery life. Will there be a fix? I'd wager there will be. When? Not a clue. Will it be announced in the fix list? Also not a clue.

pigoo3 said:

I know how important battery runtime can be to a laptop user. But it hardly seems fair to give Apple such a bad "wrap" after the Lion upgrade.

I bet that you were very very happy with your MacBook Pro when you were running Snow Leopard (10.6)...so things really shouldn't change 180 degrees so quickly. If there truly is a problem with some Apple laptop models and the Lion upgrade...let's hope it gets resolved (and resolved soon).

This is possibly one of the hazards of being an early adopter of a new OS version. I still haven't upgraded any of my Mac's to Lion (but I've been tempted)!

- Nick

Click to expand...

I buy a product, I expect it to work. I like progress to be demonstrable. This is not progress. I don't think Apple are going to worry too much about how things are at 'Chez Karlos'. I simply feel it's a tawdry & poor show to have not Beta tested it more widely. I would be embarassed ... but hey, I have higher standards it would seem. Let's hope they wake up & catch up ...... ;D

** hum.

On the bright side, I could have Windows Vista, in which case I would top myself.

Dysfunction said:

Roll back to Snow Leopard, it really is the only solid solution. I really don't believe that Apple would publicly acknowledge this bug anyway, especially with their emphasis on their portables battery life. Will there be a fix? I'd wager there will be. When? Not a clue. Will it be announced in the fix list? Also not a clue.

Click to expand...

It would sure be nice if Apple would come out with a fix...if this battery issue is truly related to Lion, and not an individual issue.

Being that the OP's MacBook Pro is a 2008 model...who knows if the age (older) is a "demotivating" factor for an Apple fix. I have a 2007 MBP...and if I upgraded to Lion...I wouldn't want to experience the same battery issue.

- Nick

karlos2000 said:

I buy a product, I expect it to work. I like progress to be demonstrable. This is not progress. I don't think Apple are going to worry too much about how things are at 'Chez Karlos'. I simply feel it's a tawdry & poor show to have not Beta tested it more widely. I would be embarassed ... but hey, I have higher standards it would seem. Let's hope they wake up & catch up ...... ;D

Click to expand...

If you've been an Apple "fanboy" since 1985 (very similar to my own Apple product experience)...you've seen MUCH worse issues & changes from Apple in the last 26 years than this!!!

- Nick

I have the same issue with my battery since installing Lion. I thought it was just me. I have 200 load cycles on my macbook pro. The way our electrical outlets are set up in our house I use the battery quite often. I guess it's time for extension cords. I wish they made the cord just a little longer.

Dysfunction said:

Roll back to Snow Leopard, it really is the only solid solution. I really don't believe that Apple would publicly acknowledge this bug anyway, especially with their emphasis on their portables battery life. Will there be a fix? I'd wager there will be. When? Not a clue. Will it be announced in the fix list? Also not a clue.

Click to expand...

I know you've mentioned this a time or two now. Have you found any rhyme or reason to it? Like a runaway process, or something consuming CPU cycles abnormally? I have to wonder what in particular is drawing so much more power - it has to be a daemon or something phoning home and using WiFi more actively.

cwa107 said:

I know you've mentioned this a time or two now. Have you found any rhyme or reason to it? Like a runaway process, or something consuming CPU cycles abnormally? I have to wonder what in particular is drawing so much more power - it has to be a daemon or something phoning home and using WiFi more actively.

Click to expand...

Nope, no runaways, no zombies. This would occur with less than 4% CPU utilization and WELL after spotlight and time machine had completed indexing. For the record, iostat also showed a pretty non-exciting disk usage at the time. Resetting the SMC, PRAM, and recalibrating the battery didn't resolve it. In the end, the only thing that did was reverting. Happily back to more than 2 hours of battery life.

Oh and at the time, the battery was as follows:

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 6817

Cycle Count: 29

Condition: Normal

I have not seen this problem at all and i have run my MBP on battery more in Lion than i have in SL. I only have 70odd cycles, and when i use it off Battery is when watching TV via my Elegato Dongle. Im getting around 3 Hrs TV time on average, with the screen set at just under half brightness.
Heck its not the battery life that has me wanting to roll back. Im Missing something major for me in System Preferences

EDIT - @OP do you have iStat Menus installed ??
I was thinking bc everyone is going on about processes, i wondered what my Mac was pulling power wise in all my components, So i opened up iStat and this is a screen shot of all Volts/Watts used.
With me not having battery problems would be nice to have something to check against.
Down the bottom when i pull put the Power Cord shows 00.0W for DC and 30.00w for Battery.

Cheers

pigoo3 said:

If you've been an Apple "fanboy" since 1985 (very similar to my own Apple product experience)...you've seen MUCH worse issues & changes from Apple in the last 26 years than this!!!

- Nick

Click to expand...

Indeed. Do you not remember my comments back then?

Actually, come to think of it, my first purchase was in summer '84. Those were the days. How time zooms by.

karlos2000 said:

Indeed. Do you not remember my comments back then?

Click to expand...

Do you mean your comments on the "internet" in 1985?

- Nick

duplicate post

pigoo3 said:

Do you mean your comments on the "internet" in 1985?

- Nick

Click to expand...

on a soap box, at Hyde Park Corner ........ most choice.






is it true, what they say about irony?

TattooedMac said:

I was thinking bc everyone is going on about processes, i wondered what my Mac was pulling power wise in all my components, So i opened up iStat and this is a screen shot of all Volts/Wa With me not having battery problems would be nice to have something to check against.
Down the bottom when i pull put the Power Cord shows 00.0W for DC and 30.00w for Battery.

Cheers

Click to expand...

here we go .........



****** Update ******

I did both the SMC & PRAM resets yesterday afternoon. Then I fitted my older [original] battery and left the MacBook on charge overnight.

This morning after an hours useage, I'm showing 68% power left, which is a massive improvement.

So, worth a try folks. Before the resets I would get 90mins use to flat maximum.

here's the score after an hour