Seagate Momentus XT Affect on 17" MBP Battery?

[wizzlez]

I'm getting a standard i5 17" MBP and I want to boost my HDD with a Seagate Momentus Hybrid XT. However, it uses double the battery wattage and I've heard from ppl that a 7200rpm drive takes the battery life from 8 to 5 hours. Has anyone put in this drive or any 7200 drive and what kind of battery results have they gotten? I want to get 6 hours of battery life if I put it at 100% brightness and have safari running a few tabs, itunes, ical, mail, and word open. If anyone thinks the momentus hybrid will put me down at about 4 hours, I'll go with the WD scorpio blue 750GB, as it seems to be the most energy efficient hdd out there. Also, what kind of speed reduction can I expect between those two HDs as far as application performance, as I don't care about boot up time or app opening time. I'm also adding 8GB Ram if that affects anything.

[ryannazaretian]

I have the laptop in my signature. I don't know the exact time. It estimates it at 9 hours. I know I got at least 5 hours out of it over the past two days.

Used for an hour during my 11AM class, 10 minutes during my 12:30PM class. Standby until this morning at 9, then 1 hour from 9-10AM, and 2 hours from 11AM-1PM. I also used it for an hour after classes just browsing the web. I then played a game for about 15 minutes. All untethered, I still had 20% remaining when I finally put it on the charger.

So in essence, I'm totally satisfied with my battery life right now. I'd go for it. I was doing some resource intensive stuff.

EDIT: After the update this afternoon and removing some unneeded software, it estimates 12 hours with WiFi off and screen brightness all the way down. I don't think it's off too far from its original designed run time.

[wizzlez]

Originally Posted by ryannazaretian

I have the laptop in my signature. I don't know the exact time. It estimates it at 9 hours. I know I got at least 5 hours out of it over the past two days.

Used for an hour during my 11AM class, 10 minutes during my 12:30PM class. Standby until this morning at 9, then 1 hour from 9-10AM, and 2 hours from 11AM-1PM. I also used it for an hour after classes just browsing the web. I then played a game for about 15 minutes. All untethered, I still had 20% remaining when I finally put it on the charger.

So in essence, I'm totally satisfied with my battery life right now. I'd go for it. I was doing some resource intensive stuff.

That's great thanks a lot. I'm in class from 11-5 using safari with a few tabs open and Word on full brightness with mail and itunes sitting idle, wifi on. How long do you think that'll last? Also, is it noticeably faster working in apps, or just opening apps and boot up?

When you say estimates 9 hours do you mean the battery life display says 9 hours or Apple dvertises 9 hours, cuz Apple's estimate is pretty overstated.

[wizzlez]

Originally Posted by ryannazaretian

I have the laptop in my signature. I don't know the exact time. It estimates it at 9 hours. I know I got at least 5 hours out of it over the past two days.

Used for an hour during my 11AM class, 10 minutes during my 12:30PM class. Standby until this morning at 9, then 1 hour from 9-10AM, and 2 hours from 11AM-1PM. I also used it for an hour after classes just browsing the web. I then played a game for about 15 minutes. All untethered, I still had 20% remaining when I finally put it on the charger.

So in essence, I'm totally satisfied with my battery life right now. I'd go for it. I was doing some resource intensive stuff.

EDIT: After the update this afternoon and removing some unneeded software, it estimates 12 hours with WiFi off and screen brightness all the way down. I don't think it's off too far from its original designed run time.

Also do you think I should go to 8GB RAM? I figure it would make iPhoto run much smoother, but I don't really use anything very intensive like video editing or photoshop. My most intensive tasks are multiple HD video streams and iPhoto editing.

[ryannazaretian]

I have no idea how it will do running it 6 hours the way you're doing. If it lasts now, it should last with the new hard drive.

The 9 hours is estimated by the battery meter.


As far as the RAM goes... you can never have too much.

[wizzlez]

Originally Posted by ryannazaretian

I have no idea how it will do running it 6 hours the way you're doing. If it lasts now, it should last with the new hard drive.

The 9 hours is estimated by the battery meter.
Attachment 259789

As far as the RAM goes... you can never have too much.

Wow, that's a ton, I'd guess if you put it on full brightness it would get 7 hrs. Im currently on the early 08 15" and the new screen is so much brighter Id assume 70% on the new one is as bright as 100% on my old one. BTW what do you expect for specs of the next update and when do you think it'll arrive. I'm hoping they'll release it on schedule in December, but they tend to update ater the holidays so they can clean out stock of the old model over the holidays. Makes me worry they'll stick to the 10 month cycle they went with on the last update and release the update in Feb, although the extra 2 months was probably due to Intel taking too long to get their chip ready for Optimus switching.

[ryannazaretian]

Originally Posted by wizzlez

Wow, that's a ton, I'd guess if you put it on full brightness it would get 7 hrs. Im currently on the early 08 15" and the new screen is so much brighter Id assume 70% on the new one is as bright as 100% on my old one. BTW what do you expect for specs of the next update and when do you think it'll arrive. I'm hoping they'll release it on schedule in December, but they tend to update ater the holidays so they can clean out stock of the old model over the holidays. Makes me worry they'll stick to the 10 month cycle they went with on the last update and release the update in Feb, although the extra 2 months was probably due to Intel taking too long to get their chip ready for Optimus switching.

No idea...

[wizzlez]

Originally Posted by ryannazaretian

No idea...

That's alright, thanks for the help. Any chance you could put your screen on full brightness and send me that pic? That would be amazing.

[Eddyisgreat]

Apple's estimates are not overestimated. They are very much achievable, but the circumstances for which one could see such times are extremely limited, since they use a fresh out of the box install, turn down the brightness to half way, turn on wifi, turn everything else off, and surf non-intensive websites all day long.

[wizzlez]

Originally Posted by Eddyisgreat

Apple's estimates are not overestimated. They are very much achievable, but the circumstances for which one could see such times are extremely limited, since they use a fresh out of the box install, turn down the brightness to half way, turn on wifi, turn everything else off, and surf non-intensive websites all day long.

Haha that's exactly what I meant by overestimated. I want to know what the battery life is at 100% brightness, as I only want to go below 80% brightness if I'm really trying to stretch my battery life out. Also, they should be doing more intense tests that the reviewers do. I saw I think anandtech or engadget do a test with a few dozen safari tabs open and 50% brightness and got 6 hours. Then they did something like HD video streaming and got 4 hours.

[aimbdd]

Why so bright? I have mine at 60 percent normally.

[Hisdem]

Wonder what you guys do to get 9 hours estimate on 17 inchers. My 13" won't go over 6 hours with AirPort on.

[jetblk328i]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Originally Posted by Eddyisgreat

Apple's estimates are not overestimated. They are very much achievable, but the circumstances for which one could see such times are extremely limited, since they use a fresh out of the box install, turn down the brightness to half way, turn on wifi, turn everything else off, and surf non-intensive websites all day long.

Lol I'm on a 13" with ssd and I barely manage 8 hours with lowest light setting, airport, firefox with adblock.

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by Eddyisgreat

Apple's estimates are not overestimated. They are very much achievable, but the circumstances for which one could see such times are extremely limited, since they use a fresh out of the box install, turn down the brightness to half way, turn on wifi, turn everything else off, and surf non-intensive websites all day long.

Actually, they don't turn off WiFi:

The wireless productivity test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing various websites and editing text in a word processor document with display brightness set to the middle setting.

(From footnote #1 at the bottom of this page.)

[wizzlez]

Originally Posted by jetblk328i

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)



Lol I'm on a 13" with ssd and I barely manage 8 hours with lowest light setting, airport, firefox with adblock.

Haha, I'm on my friends 15" MBP from last year and he's getting 6 hours on full brightness with wifi, bluetooth, safari, itunes, and Word, but his is all stock parts. id assume taking off bluetooth will tack half an hour on. Ive read hundreds of reviews on the momentus xt over the past few weeks and im seeing some ppl losing 20 minutes and some losing 3 hours. I asked an Apple Genius and he told me to expect to lose around 60-80 minutes and Ill scrifice an hour for the speed boost, as I need iPhoto and Photoshop to run smooth. Anyone removed their optibay and gone 64GB SSD and 750+ 5400 rpm HDD? Does it void applecare, I need that bad ive gone through 3 logic boards already on my old machine.

[Eddyisgreat]

Originally Posted by Eddyisgreat

...turn down the brightness to half way, turn on wifi, turn everything else off, and surf non-intensive websites all day long.

Originally Posted by GGJstudios

Actually, they don't turn off WiFi:

(From footnote #1 at the bottom of this page.)

Bro, I said turn ON wifi. How can you wirelessly surf with no bluetooth or wifi lol . You need some coffee man

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by Eddyisgreat

Bro, I said turn ON wifi. How can you wirelessly surf with no bluetooth or wifi lol .

You're absolutely correct! I read it wrong. My bad!

Originally Posted by Eddyisgreat

You need some coffee man

How did you know that was the problem? Are you psychic? Or has news of my coffee addiction spread throughout the web?

[srexy]

Originally Posted by wizzlez

That's alright, thanks for the help. Any chance you could put your screen on full brightness and send me that pic? That would be amazing.

Wizzo - do you want him to over or under-expose that pic?

[wizzlez]

Originally Posted by srexy

Wizzo - do you want him to over or under-expose that pic?

Cant tell if that's sarcastic. Just wanna see what the screen looks like on 70%