Macbook Pro + Windows 7 (bootcamp) = Terrible battery life

Question

I recently put Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on my wife's Macbook pro because of some software she bought for her business. Since then, the battery life has been abysmal.

I've identified and researched one of the problems, which is display brightness. There is no brightness control in the windows power options, but I did manually turn it down in Bootcamp.

However, it is still reporting very low battery life estimates. I'm wondering if this is because Windows thinks the display is at full brightness.

Can anyone shed any light on this? (Pun intended). Also, are there any other things to look out for that may improve the battery life? (I mean in the context of Mac + Windows, not in general)

Solution 1

First I would calibrate the battery. Charge it full, change power settings to max performance, dim screen to 'never' and allow everything to stay on until battery drains. let the lap tops turn itself off. Plug in and fully charge and battery should now be calibrated.

I have a Toshiba with win 7 home prem 64 and there are plenty of power save options including 'Dim the display:' as well as 'Adjust brightness' sliders and you can choose when it should dim while on battery and a separate option for when it's plugged in. You can also choose when other items go to sleep from network adapters to USB to hard drive. I would imagine that ultimate would have these same options and the ability to create your own custom power plan just like in home premium.

Solution 2

Biggest issue is drivers and Apple does not update drivers frequently for Windows Bootcamp. Its really too bad because I believe that is much of the issue with poor battery life. I have a late 2011 Macbook Pro with Intel 3000 graphics. Much of my battery life estamate is determined by how much brightness I use for the display. One positive is that Bootcamp is much better with battery life running Windows 7 then Parallels or Fusion which I typically thought was terrible. Although I think Bootcamp is not perfect by any stretch I do not expect Apple to devote a lot of time tweaking a OS like Windows to run on a Mac. I give Apple credit for even doing Bootcamp but I think it was in Apple's own interest to get Windows running on Mac's. A lot of third party software companies will never develop OS X versions of their software and we all know in the real world its still very much a Windows world especially in business.

Solution 3

Please, use the option of 'Balance Power' under the power option. I will keep the Laptop running for some more time and it will heat up less.

Comments

[Everett]

Is it safe to assume you have installed all the Apple drivers for Win7? Just checking the obvious stuff first.

[THE JOATMON]

That's the thing. I have the exact same OS on my Dell and the Macbook just has missing power options. I will try the battery calibration thing though...

[JoshP]

Hi, and a (belated) Welcome to SU! Thanks for posting an answer. In the future, you probably want to try to steer clear of the "me too" variety of answer. Check out the How to Answer page for tips on writing great answers.