15.2" PB Rev 'B' Battery Life

[data1ore]

Having worked on my PB for the past weeks, I have to say I'm really happy! It's such a joy, even typing on my PB (raised by the Podium Coolpad), with my matching silverish Metal GearBox (substance) enclosure and my silverish digital camera. Now all I need is the Powermate, to complete the picture :).

Anyway, I was wondering if any of you proud 15.2" Rev B PB owners noticed something about our babies - let's not even talk about the advertised battery life. What I'm interested in is feedback regarding power-saving features of our GPU (Mobility Radeon 9700 128mb/64mb versions).

I've noticed that whenever I run any game, even Chopper, that utilizes the graphics card, my battery % drops way faster than usual. It's almost as if power-saving isn't enabled much on our beast-of-a-graphics-chip. Really, this is my only gripe for this machine.

Comments people?

[JFreak]

the 15" battery is of the same size than the 12" battery, so no wonder it sucks. i have a revA 15" 1.25GHz model and in real life it's 2:30 max and there's nothing i can do about it. compared to my old tibook's constant 4+ hours, this is pathetic.

the only gripe about the beauty, really.

[frenetic]

i get a bit more on my 1,33 Ghz 15 inch (4200 rpm hd): Three hours, sometimes even three hours and a half. Of course, just doing light work like surfing, writing and so on. If I encode aac it doesn't even come close.

But I come from a rev A powerbook and I have to say this 15 inch beats its battery life. Not by much, but still... Of course we will have to see how long this lasts...

[kwajo.com]

my loaded 15" 1.5GHz gets about 4-ish hours, give or take half and hour, when doing stuff like internet, msn, and a few other basic apps, and usually photoshop at least for a few minutes. one thing i recommend is putting processor usage to Reduced when on battery, it's still very speedy, but i think saves a large amount of batery power.

[JFreak]

my loaded 15" 1.5GHz gets about 4-ish hours.

amazing! actually doing work, or just idling? i simply cannot have more than 2:30 of photoshopping or protools'ing

[kirk26]

I can get almost 4 hours doing alot on my 12" PB. I don't why it gets a bad rap. Battery life is so much better than the iBooks. Yes, yes, I've seen your statements about the iBook battery being better. I have yet to see it.

[Ryan1524]

my loaded 15" 1.5GHz gets about 4-ish hours, give or take half and hour, when doing stuff like internet, msn, and a few other basic apps, and usually photoshop at least for a few minutes. one thing i recommend is putting processor usage to Reduced when on battery, it's still very speedy, but i think saves a large amount of batery power.


yea i'd like to know, too. what are you doing typically when you get this kind of hour-age (sp??)