[Macpartners] MacBook Air 11" battery life

[Justin Fleming]

Hi Felix,

The test results from various sources around the Internet (some of the best data I've seen on this issue has been from MacObserver, here<http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/os-x-battery-life-analysis-from-snow-leopard-to-mountain-lion> and here<http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/final-builds-of-10.8.2-and-10.7.5-maintain-os-x-battery-life>) has shown OS X 10.8 and 10.8.1 to show some pretty dramatic reductions in battery life for various MacBooks, however, tests also indicate that 10.8.2 has resolved this impact for most users, and the improvements this update brought in battery life over earlier releases of 10.8, 10.7, and 10.6 are noted in these same articles.

A couple of additional troubleshooting steps you might try: have you reset your MacBook Air's SMC (http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964)?  Also, even though MacBook Air batteries are pre-calbirated, have you tried walking through Apple's battery calibration instructions (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490)?  If you continue having issues, I might recommend having your MacBook Air checked out by Apple or the Help Desk so that a diagnostic test can be run and rule out any hardware issues.

I hope this helps,
~ Justin
__

Justin Fleming
Mac Platform Coordinator
Software Release Team
Systems Engineering, IS&T, MIT
jtflem at mit.edu<mailto:jtflem at mit.edu> | 617.253.0157 | W92-229A

Important: IS&T staff will never ask you for your password, nor will MIT send you email requesting your password information.  Please ignore any email messages that claim to require you to provide such information.

On Nov 19, 2012, at 11:46 AM, Felix Kreisel <fjk at MIT.EDU<mailto:fjk at MIT.EDU>> wrote:

Hi,

I have a battery life problem with a new MacBook Air 11" purchased in mid-2012. The MBA came with 10.7.4, and I upgraded to 10.8.1, then to 10.8.2. Battery charge used to last 6+ hours until I upgraded to 10.8.2. Then I started to notice a dramatic decrease in actual life, down to 3-to-4 hours. My mix of programs did not change between 10.7 and now: Chrome, Dreamweaver, Mail, Calendar; I always turn Bluetooth off, and keep the screen intensity at about half.

Peculiarities that I noticed with 10.8.2: After waking the laptop from sleep by lifting the lid it indicates a 100% charge, but during the next few minutes it tells me it is "calculating time remaining". It keeps recalculating. Now at 96% it tells me I have 3:56 remaining. When connected to the charger, the battery monitor also calculates "time until full charge". This calculation is also peculiar. E.g. at 98% charge, the battery meter told me that it would take 27 minutes for a full charge". It only took about 5 minutes.

There is also the ever busy Wifi scanner. This has been an ongoing feature (bug) of the OS. The Wifi is constantly scanning for networks.

The Activity Monitor is useless since it tells me that the laptop is using 7-10% of CPU, i.e. basically, the laptop is not busy.

Apple is willing to replace the battery, if I request, but I don't think there is anything wrong with the hardware. I have read that Mountain Lion (10.8) was bad for batteries, that 10.8.1 made some fixes, but in my case 10.8.2 was a battery killer.

Does anybody have any ideas of what is going on?

Felix Kreisel - Systems Engineer,
Plasma Science & Fusion Center, MIT
617-253-8625   fjk at mit.edu<mailto:fjk at mit.edu>


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