Battery Life on 2009 MBP

[fins831]

ML seems to have really took a beating on my battery life. I would wager I am seeing 30 percent less use out of my laptop since upgrading, the percentages just keep dropping. On average I prob got 4-5 hours of straight use, no video before, now I am lucky if I get 3 solid hours.

Info: MBP unibody2009 8 Gig Ram, ML upgrade, 2.26 Ghz
650 cycles
Tests say the battery is doing just fine
Brightness without charger is about 45 percent
Energy Saver options are enabled and running/functioning
Nothing heavy running in the background - only diff from SL -> ML is icloud

Any ideas, or anyone seeing the same issue?

Other than this one issue I am loving ML so far.

 

[GGJstudios]

ML seems to have really took a beating on my battery life. I would wager I am seeing 30 percent less use out of my laptop since upgrading, the percentages just keep dropping. On average I prob got 4-5 hours of straight use, no video before, now I am lucky if I get 3 solid hours.

Info: 2009 8 Gig Ram ML upgrade
650 cycles
Tests say the battery is doing just fine
Brightness without charger is about 45 percent
Energy Saver options are enabled and running/functioning
Nothing heavy running in the background - only diff from SL -> ML is icloud

Any ideas, or anyone seeing the same issue?

There are many factors that impact your battery life. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link for details, including tips on how to maximize your battery life.

This should answer most, if not all, of your battery/charging questions:

Apple Notebook Battery FAQ​

 

[fins831]

There are many factors that impact battery life...but one major change from last week and this week is ML.

Just wondering if anyone else has noticed any changes. I have read that time and time again and doesn't change the issue at hand...the only variable change since last week is mountain lion.

 

[GGJstudios]

There are many factors that impact battery life...but one major change from last week and this week is ML.

Just wondering if anyone else has noticed any changes. I have read that time and time again and doesn't change the issue at hand...the only variable change since last week is mountain lion.

So did you go through the list? It addresses possible solutions, even if you just upgraded to ML.

 

[alFR]

Any ideas, or anyone seeing the same issue?

Spotlight isn't reindexing your system volume, is it? That would hit battery life until it's finished.

 

[fins831]

Only solution I think I could try is gfx thing. Rest I have tried already.

 

[fins831]

Spotlight isn't reindexing your system volume, is it? That would hit battery life until it's finished.

Spotlight is finished reindexing. It did it the first day.

 

[GGJstudios]

Only solution I think I could try is gfx thing. Rest I have tried already.

Attached some pics

There's nothing there that would indicate high resource usage, either by apps or the OS. Here's a few other things that may help improve performance and reduce power demands:

Performance Tips For Mac OS X​

 

[fins831]

Just deleted some widgets and some stuff from startup folder, did a restart and just hit 5 percent, going to run it down to 1-2 percent and give it a full charge and see if any difference. Did a few performance tweaks here and there.

 

[MoxFulder]

Same problem as you with same specs.
Check my posts...nothing helped so far. It IS because of ML.

 

[GGJstudios]

Same problem as you with same specs.
Check my posts...nothing helped so far. It IS because of ML.

And yet many, many others have no such problems with ML. It's not the upgrade; it's something specific to your computer.

 

[fins831]

Really don't want to do a clean install, but I will if this holds up for a week or so

 

[Ragnar-Kon]

Had the same issue with a late 2008 MBP after the Lion upgrade... knocked down my battery life by ~20% or so. Ended up doing a clean install and that fixed it. No idea what it was, but I have a feeling it was an application that just wasn't compatible with Lion.

With Mountain Lion I didn't even bother doing the upgrade... just did a clean install. No noticeable drop in battery life this time around but all three of my batteries (my laptop is pre-unibody) are so beyond dead that I'm lucky to get 30 minutes out of them anyway.

It has always been my policy with Windows machines to do a clean install for a major software upgrade, and I've since extended that same policy to Mac machines. Solves TONS of problems. I would ask friends with later MBPs to see if they have issues but they've all done clean installs as well.

 

[meme1255]

In my case it looks like Safari 6 is a problem - it has CPU usage spikes around 80% ( Just 6 tabs of Macrumors topics with click to plugin and adblock..)

 

[rangen]

Clean install has added an hour to the battery life of my 2010 MacBook Pro

 

[sigbiz]

Better battery life

I'm getting around 1 hr longer also when doing office type stuff on my Macbook pro early 2011. That was with simple (not clean) install.

 

[MoxFulder]

Clean install of ML, still the same.
Clean install of Lion, everything back to normal. Been on the battery for 3.5 hours now, it's at 70%

Now, who said it has nothing to do with ML?

 

[GGJstudios]

Clean install of ML, still the same.
Clean install of Lion, everything back to normal. Been on the battery for 3.5 hours now, it's at 70%

Now, who said it has nothing to do with ML?

It's still something to do with your particular computer and installation. If it was a problem with ML, everyone would have the same problem, which they don't.

 

[MoxFulder]

It's still something to do with your particular computer and installation. If it was a problem with ML, everyone would have the same problem, which they don't.

Yes, and interestingly the other folks with the same issues also have a 2009 MBP, at least one of them also a 13". We'll see if there's going to be a solution one day.