How is the battery life on the newest MacBook Pro 13" when running Windows 7?

my windows 7 laptop battery life last up to 4 hours if you do the math your mac laptop might last longer or shorter depending on what setting you have it on

mikes63737 said:

Thanks, but that's not really what I'm looking for. I'm asking how long it lasts on Mac hardware, which is optimized for best battery life under Mac OS X. I know that it won't last as long under Windows 7 as it does under Mac OS X.

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Ive heard people say 1-2 hours but ive never been able to test it and that seems very low on the new mbps.

mikes63737 said:

Hmmm... that does seem really low. I can get about 3 hours running it in a VM on my current MBP (Late 2007 model w/ 5-hour claimed battery life).

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Running it in a VM is not the same as running it boot camp. Running it as a VM, you can take 1-2 hours off the battery life, depending on if the VM's running tasks or idling. Running it boot camp will squeeze a bit more power off the system.

I was able to get 1.5 hours with 100% brightness and gaming under Windows 7 on a MacBook Air, Rev C. That's about 30 minutes less then running the same tasks under OSX.

2 hours lowest brightness on XP -->Word processing and internet browsing

mikes63737 said:

My current Mac is on its last legs, and I need a new one this summer. Since all this great new stuff (LightPeak, FW1600, USB3, SATA 6, Quad-core i7, etc) is just around the corner, I think that I will get a 13" MBP for now until the 15/17" MBPs get (some of) these new features.

After I get the 15/17" MBP, I will run Windows 7 almost full-time on this Mac. About how long does the battery last running Windows 7?

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I wondered the same before I got this new machine. I have the base 15" i5 macbook pro and I get a max of 4-5 hours in Windows 7 64 bit in bootcamp. That's if I halve the brightness, turn off the keyboard back-lighting, and do only light browsing with wifi on (or turn off wifi and type in MS Word with funky macros going). Running the same windows 7 as a virtual machine in OSX I get 4 hours max, and that is with an even lower brightness setting. Point is you get better battery life, in my experience, running windows 7 from boot camp. Running the Windows 7 virtual machine not only lays double taxes on the memory, but also the discrete graphics is always running. On the other hand I can do light browsing or type up a paper in OSX for up to 8 hours with dimmed lights. OSX battery is way > Windows 7 on a macbook pro. While playing avi video in OSX, I get up to 5 hours. While streaming netflix, I can get about 4 hours. Hope this helps.

I just recently bought a 13" MBP and run both OS X and Windows 7 on it. So far my experience has been a little over 7 hours on OS X with moderate use (brightness at a little under halfway and auto adjustment on). Mostly browsing, some flash, some video, streaming from a SMB share.

When running Windows 7 with the same use I get between 4-5 hours. I'm still tweaking the settings in Windows 7 to see if I can get it even better. Setting the brightness to go way down while on battery is the first thing. Also lowering or turning off the keyboard backlight and adjusting how long before the display sleeps. 4.5-5 hours is more than acceptable to me, but I'm still on the lookout for anyone that gets close to OS X battery life. I'm sure with better drivers and the right tweaks it would be very possible to get similar battery life.

I was looking for anyone that had tweaked enough to do this when I came across your post so I thought I'd share my experience.