MacBook Pro battery question

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I am not "new" to Macs, but have fairly recently switched, so am still getting used to some things.

We took my MacBook in to the Apple Store Genius Bar to have a few issues checked. One being the battery. It no longer holds a charge for the 11-12 hours it used to when I first bought it.

The tech checked the battery, and he said it was at 98% health. I have seen that, too, but why, then, does it not hold a charge for long? If I'm just surfing the 'Net, shouldn't it hold the charge for longer than 4-5 hours? When I first bought it, I could surf, play an online game, and have some Adobe softwares open, and it would last about 8 hours. Now, just surfing the 'Net today, I have to recharge the battery after 4 hours.

We did uninstall Kaspersky, because the tech was totally against (my college IT instructor suggested Kaspersky, even for Mac.), and did a disk repair on a few things. I was expecting more battery life than I'm getting.

What am I doing wrong?
 
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What year is it? I got a 2007 MBP and I am going on my 3rd battery.
 
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chas_m

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1. Today compared to when you first got this thing, you are watching a LOT more video online. Everyone is. It sucks up battery like nothing else (shakes fist at Adobe for Flash). You can mitigate this a bit by switching to HTML5 only for places like Vimeo and YouTube either by setting a pref on their site or by installing a Safari or Firefox plug-in that tames Flash players and forces them to use HTML when available.

2. You may have inadvertently cranked up the brightness on your laptop due to your environments (as I sometimes do). :) This again will eat the battery. When on battery, keep the brightness down as low as you can.

3. Uninstall that "anti-virus." It is most definitely eating your battery because it's doing a ton of checks for viruses that DO NOT EXIST. I know you said you uninstalled it, but you probably didn't. You probably just dragged it to the trash. With "anti-virus" programs, you MUST use the provided uninstaller.

Is there any chance at all that you've installed the hideous malware known as Mac Keeper?
 
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re: Battery

1. Today compared to when you first got this thing, you are watching a LOT more video online. Everyone is. It sucks up battery like nothing else (shakes fist at Adobe for Flash). You can mitigate this a bit by switching to HTML5 only for places like Vimeo and YouTube either by setting a pref on their site or by installing a Safari or Firefox plug-in that tames Flash players and forces them to use HTML when available.

2. You may have inadvertently cranked up the brightness on your laptop due to your environments (as I sometimes do). :) This again will eat the battery. When on battery, keep the brightness down as low as you can.

3. Uninstall that "anti-virus." It is most definitely eating your battery because it's doing a ton of checks for viruses that DO NOT EXIST. I know you said you uninstalled it, but you probably didn't. You probably just dragged it to the trash. With "anti-virus" programs, you MUST use the provided uninstaller.

Is there any chance at all that you've installed the hideous malware known as Mac Keeper?

My laptop is a mid 2010 model: Processor 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Memory 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256 MB, Software OS X 10.8.2 (12C60).

1) I do watch some podcasts for classes, and usually have it plugged in when doing so.
2) I do have the brightness cranked up because otherwise it's too dark for me to make anything out. That shouldn't be, either, I'm sure. Could be my old eyes??? :Confused: Seems like the brightness keeps getting darker.
3) No, I uninstalled Kaspersky. Or, actually, the Apple tech did upon my agreement. And, if I had done an uninstall, I would have done an actual uninstall, so I don't think that is the problem.
The trash has been securely emptied, the computer has been restarted a couple times, and even if I'm just doing a basic surfing of the 'Net, the battery still isn't holding a charge for longer than about 4 hours.
I did forget to ask while with the tech if originally keeping the laptop plugged in most of the time I was using it would have made an affect. I'm a graphic design student, so had multiple Adobe apps open and running, as well as sometimes having podcasts running.

I'm just trying to figure out if this is a "normal" thing for this model, or if I'm doing something, inadvertently, wrong with it.
 
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We took my MacBook in to the Apple Store Genius Bar to have a few issues checked. One being the battery. It no longer holds a charge for the 11-12 hours it used to when I first bought it.

When I first bought it, I could surf, play an online game, and have some Adobe softwares open, and it would last about 8 hours. Now, just surfing the 'Net today, I have to recharge the battery after 4 hours.

What am I doing wrong?

Hi,
It looks like you are maxxing the battery out before recharging which will have a dramatic affect on it's projected cycle count..a bit like a mechanical device wears out after heavy use.

The mantra is "The shorter the discharge, the longer the battery will last."

The shorter the depth of discharge before you recharge the happier your battery will be...it's less stressful...you just need to keep the ions moving around a bit and not keep resuscitating them from a flat-lining situation.
 
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Hi,
It looks like you are maxxing the battery out before recharging which will have a dramatic affect on it's projected cycle count..a bit like a mechanical device wears out after heavy use.

The mantra is "The shorter the discharge, the longer the battery will last."

The shorter the depth of discharge before you recharge the happier your battery will be...it's less stressful...you just need to keep the ions moving around a bit and not keep resuscitating them from a flat-lining situation.

So, you are saying that I should let the battery completely die before I recharge? I've tried that, also.

Otherwise, I have no idea what you are saying! LOL
 

pigoo3

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So, you are saying that I should let the battery completely die before I recharge? I've tried that, also.

No...what pendlewitch is actually saying is shorter discharges are better (not using the battery until it gets super low). This may not always be possible...but when it is possible (for example if the battery is at 75% charge)...charge the battery.:)

- Nick
 
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No...what pendlewitch is actually saying is shorter discharges are better (not using the battery until it gets super low). This may not always be possible...but when it is possible (for example if the battery is at 75% charge)...charge the battery.:)

- Nick

Thanks Nick. If I'm understanding what you are saying, I should wait to charge the battery when it is lower?
 
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Thanks Nick. If I'm understanding what you are saying, I should wait to charge the battery when it is lower?

Hi TanBrae,

The way it works is that it is less stressful for your battery if you recharge from a higher residual capacity than from a lower one...a bit like only pouring say 20% of the water out of a bucket before filling it back up to the top again..in other words recharging from 80% full is better than recharging from the red-zone.
 

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If I'm understanding what you are saying, I should wait to charge the battery when it is lower?

Nope...you still have it backwards!;) Do the opposite of what you said above...and then you got it correct!:)

- Nick
 
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No, what Nick and every one else is saying is charge the battery as often as possible, if it is 50% 80% 90% charged it doesnt matter it just keeps the battery electricity moving. deep discharging ruins the battery sooner.
 
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Thank you!

Thanks to all who were patient enough to reply and explain. I appreciate it, and will now bring my battery down to only about 75% before recharging. Mac forum peeps are so much more helpful than Windows forum peeps!
 
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chas_m

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Also -- and I'm surprised nobody mentioned this until now -- download and use the free Coconut Battery utility. It will tell you AT A GLANCE if the battery is in fact damaged in some way or is (normally) slowly decaying.

Here's my report as an example:

Coconut-battery-report.jpg

As you can see, my 3.5-year old battery has lost 20 percent of its total capacity. I keep mine (since I got it last year, anyway) MOSTLY plugged in, but I do tend to let it run down to nearly empty when I run it on battery, which is once a month or so.

All the stats you're seeing there are pretty normal for a machine of this age. The battery is designed to gently decay over time. If I unplug it (I have it on the mains just at the moment), keeping the screen very dim (not much of an issue in dim lighting environments in which I tend to hang out) but BT and Wi-Fi on, I expect about three to four hours of use depending on what I'm doing (at the moment, writing this and streaming Internet radio).

This is just to give you some frame of reference.
 

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