My Mountain lion is Draining my battery

Greetings,

 

The issue that you are experiencing is a well known issue that Apple is investigating. While they are doing this and looking for fixes on Mountain Lion's bugs you can try a few things that may help increase the longevity of battery life. 

 

1.) Hold the option key and click the battery status menu to display the condition of your battery. (You may need a new one) Next change the screen's brightness to the lowest acceptable level. To do this go to the Apple Menu and choose System Preferences. Next choose the View menu and select Energy Saver. There are lots of options to help with battery life in this menu. Dimming the display and automatic graphic switching, if available, are two options that will significantly help your battery life. If you have not done so already. 

 

2.) Go to your Activity Monitor App: by going to Applications - then Utilities- Click Activity Monitor. This application shows you what is running in the background on your computer that may be consuming battery life. Don't go through and close all programs because you need a lot of them to run for your computer to work. What we are looking for here are applications you commonly use that may be open while you are not using them.

 

If you use Google Chrome it can be running more than once in the background of your system creating a drag on computer responsiveness and battery life. If you do see Google Chrome open when you aren't using it go ahead and close the programs by highlighting the program and clicking stop. Flash is another program that may be running in the background that would drain your battery. It has a plug-in for each browser associated with it.

 

So if you use Chrome, Firefox, and Safari or any mixture of the three on your laptop you may have two large Flash programs running in the background. Close the Flash that corresponds with the browser you are not currently using and that will free up resources as well. 

 

3.) Lastly- you can download smcFanControl for Intel based Macs to help with fan speed. Sometimes when Macs run hot they are using a lot of battery power. This will help you set the fans at a higher rate so you don't have any system failure from overheating. http://download.cnet.com/smcFanControl/3000-18487_4-102230.html This is a link to download the free utility.