Panasonic Youth rob sanheim writes about software, business, ruby, music, stuff and things

MacBook Pro battery life - 2.5 hours?

So I’m contemplating getting a MacBook Pro pretty soon, but if the reports of 2.5 hours of battery life are accurate I may have to reconsider.

Granted, the main benchmark that is getting a lot of attention is a worst case scenario, where the guy didn’t prep the battery and turned off hard drive spin down. Still, I doubt doing things the right way would net much more then three hours. Thats only a little bit better then the mediocre HP P4 laptop I use that doesn’t even have a mobile processor in it.

Before I owned a laptop I figured battery life wouldn’t matter much to me. I don’t really travel much and most places I do want to use a laptop I can plug it in easy enough. Since owning one and incorporating it into my workflow, though, I realize how great it would be to have a laptop that could just go for four or five hour - I’d be able to go code at a coffee shop without worrying about bringing the power brick.

So I’ll wait and see awhile, and see what more extensive reports bring. Maybe you can get longer life aftermarket batteries like you can with Dell and other wintels?

According to the “pessimistic” test you linked to, it lasts 20 minutes longer than the G4 Powerbook battery under the same circumstances. That’s nothing to complain about, honest.

Turning the display brightness down to a minimum (which I do on my G4 as a matter of course when it’s on battery) should net you at least another hour of battery life, if not more.

I was afraid of that. The battery life of the Powerbooks IMO was probably one of their strongest features. If the best the new MacBook Pro gets is 2.5hrs I’m gonna have to pass.

Erik

The test showed the macbook to have longer - read that again LONGER - battery life than the powerbook.

That is a good thing - a longer battery life is what we want :)

The battery life is one of the most importent things on a laptop, that is the biggest reason that made me buy my ibook G4, 6 houres is still not as good as it could be, i hope that the new MacBook (ibook) will have 7 - 10 hours of battery life!!!

What is the idé with a portable computer, with no battery life?

just got one yerterday! and it lasts 4 hours with the light on the highest it could go! FYI !!

Tommy: really? Thats quite a bit longer then the rest of the reports I’ve seen, which average 3 to 3.25 hours.

Mathias: seven to ten hours would be incredible, I don’t know of any normal laptops that get that w/o an extended life battery or some sort of crazy low-power cpu.

i’ve had my 15 inch MBP for about 3 months now and the battery life is great. i havent really timed it at all, but it gets me though a full 6.5 hour day at school (on sleep for about 3 hours though) and then about an hour after school. that comes out to about 4.5 hours give or take. most of the time it’s on about half brightness. i would say the biggest thing other than brightness that i’ve noticed affecting my battery life is bluetooth. but once again, i dont know how much it really takes up

sorry for the double post, but check out this site, lots of things that no one would think about turning off.

http://www.macsimumnews.com/index.php/archive/macosg_how_to_extend_your_battery_life

i’ve had my 15 inch MBP for almost a year now. I just had a problem with the battery where it would last from the average 2.5 hours to only 45 minutes. I just got a new battery since I’m on the Apple Care Plan. Now my battery lasts 2.5 hours (more or less depending on what I’m doing). The battery could last me all day, but I’m usually around an outlet, so my computer is always working.