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Madrag · Mar 31, 2008, 08:07 AM

hello all,

I've just bought a new MBP 2.2 (because of the newer MBP, this one was really cheap, but it's still brand new).

It comes with Leopard and all is lovely.

The battery was at 0% as expected, and I charged it to 100% without problems

I shut it down and removed the magsafe, and on the next day (+/- 9 hours after), after turning it on, I noticed it had the battery at about 79%...

I thought, "ok, this must be somekind of auto-wear because it's new".

On that day I used the mac with the battery and it lasted at least 2 hours while playing with photobooth and other apps.

When the battery was almost at 10%, I plugged the magsafe and let the charge begin. All is well and it charged to 100%. At the end of the evening, shut-down, remove magsafe.

Next day: 79% again???

What's this due to?
I shut it down, nothing is using the battery, is it?

on my powerbook 500, after 7 years, from one day to another, it would "use" about 1% or less, so I don't understand this??

Just in case, I removed the battery at 12:00 and will put it back into the mac at 19:00 to assess the battery state. This way I'll know if the battery is wearing off by itself or not...

Anyone can give me some hint of what I should do? or if this is normal with a new battery?

TIA!

ghporter · Mar 31, 2008, 08:09 AM

You don't mention having properly calibrated the computer and battery's power meter. The basic technique is to fully charge the battery and then run the machine on battery until it shuts down due to low battery power. I'll bet that fixes things for you.

Madrag · Mar 31, 2008, 08:16 AM

thanks for the tip!

I'm going to do that!
The fact that I didn't do that after two days, does it "hurt" my battery?

mduell · Mar 31, 2008, 01:32 PM

No, it doesn't hurt your battery. It's just a display issue.

peeb · Mar 31, 2008, 01:54 PM

I came to this thread thinking it would be about deep frying my MBP.

cms · Mar 31, 2008, 02:02 PM

Originally Posted by peeb

I came to this thread thinking it would be about deep frying my MBP.

Cold Warrior · Mar 31, 2008, 02:16 PM

Originally Posted by peeb

I came to this thread thinking it would be about deep frying my MBP.

Originally Posted by cms

Thread title fixed.

Madrag · Mar 31, 2008, 03:31 PM

it's now 20:32 and I've placed the battery, so that I can start following ghporter's recommendation to run the mac on battery untill it shuts-down.

After more than 8 hours without behing on the mac, the battery is at 99%, which tells me one thing: the mac may be wasting the battery while shut-down??

Anyway, I'll wear it until dry, recharge it, and shut it down. Tomorrow, I'll see if the battery state is at 79% as it has been on the last two days.

P.S. thanks for the thread title correction, I tried to do that and I couldn't.

ghporter · Mar 31, 2008, 06:04 PM

Your Mac is smart enough that running it on AC will not hurt the battery. It's built to be able to do that, as well as run on the battery when you're not plugged in. But the system works best when you do a combination of the two, regularly using the battery and charging it to full. My two year old MBP has only recently stopped showing "95% health", but it still runs just fine. I think it may be time to recalibrate the battery meter, but otherwise it's quite accurate.

Madrag · Apr 1, 2008, 05:10 AM

after using it for a while, I didn't have enough time to drain it, so I left it asleep whilst it had 49%
today (after almost 8 hours), it has only 18%?

this is odd. I know it is supposed to use some of the battery while at sleep, but this is too much.

I'm now doing a test with my 7 year old powerbook G4 and this MBP. I've left them both sleeping and will compare the percent after three hours or so. I'm doing this, because I'm positive the PB didn't use that much battery while asleep, and mind you that it has a 7 years old battery!

I'm sad.

Madrag · Apr 1, 2008, 07:27 AM

ok, I've got the results of a quick sleep comparison between the PB and the MBP, and this is odd:

after 2 hours, the PB "used" about 4% of the battery
and the MBP "used" about 7% of the battery...

is this normal?
I've got bluetooth and airport off.

Anyway, I've now drained the MBP battery and will charge it again to the fullest and see if it "uses" battery whilst off...

ghporter · Apr 1, 2008, 07:58 AM

Just sitting there it shouldn't really "use" much battery power-though "OFF" is a relative thing. Unless you remove the battery completely, your laptop will still consume power. The power button is NOT a "power switch," but rather it provides a logic level signal to the PMU to start (or stop) the computer-which means that there has to be something on all the time, looking for that signal. So you should see some drop in charge after the computer sits overnight. That doesn't mean it should be a large drop though.

Check out the System Profiler's data on your battery (it's under "Power"). Mine says its health is "fair", and iStat Pro says it's health is 57%. This is after two and a half years of use, sometimes plugged in, sometimes on battery. I'm planning on recalibrating my battery meter this weekend-it's something you can do any time, and it may change the health reading from both System Profiler and iStat Pro.

Madrag · Apr 1, 2008, 01:33 PM

thanks for the explanation!
I knew some of that, but my worries are because of my experience with the powerbook, which has a very old battery and while shut down, it only "uses" a very small percentage, ie: almost 6% in a week, and as you can see from my previous posts, the MBP is using much more than that in less than 9 hours! Is this normal?

It may be due to not having callibrated it before, and now that I have, let's see tomorrow how much it has after a shutdown...

BTW, here's the system profile for my battery:
As you can see, it's brand new and shouldn't have any trouble...

Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 5336
Fully charged: Yes
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 5566
Health Information:
Cycle count: 3
Battery health: Good
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 0
Voltage (mV): 12363

mduell · Apr 1, 2008, 02:42 PM

I really wouldn't worry about percentage used while sleeping.

Madrag · Apr 2, 2008, 06:42 PM

here I am again, with an upsetting update:

I charged (to 100%) the MBP yesterday (01.04) and at 00:00 I shut it down.
No USB connected, nothing. Just a plain shut down and removed the mag safe. Just how I did with my PB.

Today, intentionally, I left the MBP untouched until it was about 24 hours past the full charge, just to check the battery after a long shut down.

Bloody hell!, I just started it and it shows 49% (and by pressing the button at the bottom of the battery, the green dots are more or less at half).

I'm positive it isn't the battery, because the other day I left it outside the mac and for six hours it didn't "use" any power, as expected!

Please someone advise if this is normal at the beginning.
I know I shouldn't worry about the percentage while sleeping, but this is something else, it's a shutdown.
I mean, by tomorrow, the battery will be at almost 10% and by lunchtime tomorrow it will be at 0%...

I'm now positive it is the mac, but is this unusual? or just something that happens while the battery is new?
what should I do?

TIA!

ghporter · Apr 2, 2008, 08:06 PM

This is NOT normal behavior. Contact your Apple Store and have your computer and battery looked at.

mduell · Apr 2, 2008, 08:20 PM

I can't really tell what you're doing, but it doesn't sound like you're following Apple's simple instructions.

1. Charge the laptop until the battery is full (LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged).

2. Let it sit, on and plugged in, for 2 hours.

3. Unplug it and use it until the laptop goes to sleep on its own.

4. Let the laptop sleep for 5 hours.

5. Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.

Madrag · Apr 3, 2008, 11:34 AM

I'll do that (again).

this isn't the battery for sure, because I left it out of the mac the other day for about six hours, and when plugging it to the mac, it didn't loose any of the power, it shown 99%...

I'll be back (hopefully with better news).

Madrag · Apr 6, 2008, 07:34 AM

ok, I've just returned to the store, and they've got one in stock (at the nort of the country) and hopefully it will arrive by thursday and let's hope it doesn't have the same issue!

BTW: this MBP had the lower part of the display with the darker/yellow problem, which the assistants at the store acknowledged right away, good for me! I hope the new one is ok in both aspects (battery + display)!

I'll post the results here and thank you for all the valuable replies so far!

Madrag · Apr 24, 2008, 05:54 AM

after several weeks, my new MBP (exactly the same specs, just a new one) has arrived!

I'm glad to tell you that this one doesn't have any battery issues. I've left it off for more than one day and the battery is still full (the other one by this time wouldn't have any battery!)

thanks all for their help!

moving on