Is it normal for a 2011 MBP to display “Not Charging” while using Skype?

Question

Whenever I use Skype, my MBP displays "Not Charging" about 95% of the time. When it is charging, it is extremely slow, gaining 1% over maybe an hour or so. Additionally, if I start using Skype on battery power, with my Mac charged at 100%, the battery drains to nothing over just an hour and a half, on average. I'm literally running Skype and Safari (Facebook) and that is it.

When I use battery power, the screen brightness is at 50%.

I use Growl, iCloud, and an app called UnPlugged (a preference pane) that alerts me whenever my Mac is plugged in or unplugged.

The Mac was purchase 5 months ago, and is well maintained.

2.3 GHz i7 4 GB 1333 Mhz DDR3 Ram 750 GB HD OS 10.7.2 Build 11C74

Answer 1

When you have Skype running, and you see either slow charging or fast battery draining (depending on whether or not it's plugged in), launch an application called Activity Monitor. You can launch it from Spotlight, or from the Finder when you go to the /Applications/Utilities folder, or from Launchpad if you go into the Utilities folder.

With Activity Monitor open, click on the column header that says "% CPU", and click it again if needed to make the little triangle point down. This will show your running applications, with the ones using the most CPU at the top. Also, you can select "CPU" from the tab bar near the bottom of the window. There you'll see a graph of the load (or demand) on the CPU.

This will give you indications of whether the CPU is working excessively, and which applications are causing the issue. It's a fair assumption that Skype is using a lot of CPU for some reason. Do some observations, then go to the Skype support webpage (for US English, go here: https://support.skype.com/en-us/).

If you find that some other process or application is causing the high CPU usage, leave a comment here or update your original question with your findings.

Answer 2

I can confirm you that it's NOT normal at all. When the charger is on, provided it's the right one and the Tension/Power is correct, the mac should not do that.

If your battery is below 98% (apron.), plugging it to the wall should charge it and then it should switch to "Charged 100% (or 99/98%) and start using the power from the outlet (and not the battery).

THe Not Charging can occur when:

• The battery is faulty (and therefore it doesn't charge) so the board is reporting this to you: "hey, this battery is not charging and it should".
• The Power Adapter is not delivering the correct power (or enough power if the tension is low). This can cause the charging board to cut the battery charging process because there's not enough power to guarantee a proper charge (and failure to do this may result in your battery life being decreased).
• The unlikely event where you've connected way too many devices to your USB/FW/Etc. ports in your computer, and the power adapter can't keep with the power demand. (I've only seen this happen once with a POWERBOOK a long time ago).

Skype, with all the bad things it has, cannot drain your battery like that (unless, of course, it's a high CPU usage like bneely said in the previous answer).

If you restart and keep noticing this, I'd recommend two paths:

1) Create a new blank user and try from there. See if you get the same problem. If yes, then see #2, if not, then it's some software problem and we can move from there.

2) If the issue still persists with a new user after a hard reboot and you've performed the basic stuff, I'd take the machine to an App Store for further inspection. If your power adapter is bad, it can slowly damage your battery capacity (it's the same as if you use a higher power adapter than the one you're supposed to use, yes, it can charge faster, but you're draining your battery).