My week-and-a-half old MacBookPro (2.33 15") has been sailing along trouble free until Friday night when seemingly out of the blue it started to get hot and the battery life was cut in half. As in I would unplug the power cord on a fully-charged battery and the battery indicator would say "100%" and "1:54 remaining." And it was accurate. The battery would drop down at a rate twice as fast as it should. Plus the fans were running harder than usual and the underside of the computer was really hot.
I called Apple and they suggested calibrating the battery (I explained I did that as soon as I bought it), they reminded me this needs to be done every couple of months (I explained the computer was a week old -- "Oh"), she went to research the problem, came back to say nothing like it had been reported and suggested I take it in to a Genius Bar. She had no other ideas and we ended the call.
OK, while mulling it over it then occurred to me that it wouldn't hurt to do a PRAM reset (and hey, reset the SMC while I'm at it too). I did both, and instantly the problem was fixed. Cooler temperatures and a 4-hour+ battery life when fully charged. It also drained at the correct rate too. Great.
My question is, what could cause the power management system to get out of whack like that? I know how to fix it, but I'm wondering what could cause the problem in the first place. I don't recall doing anything special to my machine before the problem occurred in the first place. Any ideas?
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