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I was getting 5 hours too when I got my i5. But I figured out why - Apple's new automatic graphics switching is causing the 330m discreet graphics chip to be activated at the silliest things - safari opening gmail, or certain mundane applications - basically it's switching from the integrated to the 330m and staying there until you quit the application altogether!

By restarting and ensuring that only the integrated GPU is active (via system profiler) - I am actually sitting here now with 7 and a half hours left on battery with Safari open, brightness at half at 94% battery.

It's the active 330m GPU giving people poor battery life.

You mean that there's a way to set so that the integrated GPU is the active one?
 
i bet if enough people complain/take note of this problem, there will be a firmware update in the near future to address the sensitivity of the graphics switching. Hopefully at least! i dont really do anything that requires a super video card, but sure would love a battery life thats a few hours longer than what i am getting now.
 
Remember to run Safari in 32bit mode so flash wont run via a wrapper. That should net you a good hour or so in web browsing.
 
Get click to flash your battery life will skyrocket.

I'm sure Apple will be fixing a lot of the auto switching GPU issues after RevA users have complained enough.
 
I also have the new i5 15" HR 2.53" 500gb 7200 RPM and my battery experience out of the box (and brightness set to half) is exactly the same as the author of the thread. I have seen my battery indicator read just barely seven hours if I don't touch anything after a full charge.

I have been surfing Safari for 15 minutes now from a full charge this morning and my indicator was 5 hours remaining exactly.

Battery life is very impressive compared to a PC...but my wife's 13" MBP from December gets seven hours quite often. Point being is her battery gets closer to what was claimed and we haven't turned anything off where as this new i5 is getting about 60-65% of the claimed battery life with the same type of usage. Not sure why in one instance Apple would get it right and in another get it so wrong.
 
To be clear, I'm getting about 7 hours on the battery indicator with NO apps open at all and no internet with screen brightness all the way down. Five hours with light web browsing.

Mine is showing close to 11 hrs when idling with no apps open.

After first charge it was a bit over 100% (6989/6900). Second charge was 99% (6850/6900).
I guess i'll get over 6800-7000 from charge to charge, it all depends on temperature in the room etc, so don't worry people!
 
I discovered why my new MBP has bad battery life!

As discussed above, my battery life at idle on my new i5 15" MBP is rated at 7 hours with no wifi and brightness set to minimum. A friend of mine also has a new MBP, but his says 11-12 hours at idle. I put both laptops side by side and made sure the 330M was disabled.

My laptop was using ~1 amp of energy according to iStat, while his was using ~0.6 amps. This would almost exactly explain the difference in battery life. However, when I started watching the same video on both laptops, our laptops began to use exactly the same amount of amps and had extremely similar battery lifes (approx 4 hours).

TLDR: My Macbook Pro, and likely many of the other ones mentioned in the other thread, appear to be DEFECTIVE because they uses too much energy when idle. What should we do?
 
If it's any consolation my mbp was rated at 3 hours when i first took it off the AC adapter. Haven't had time to play around with it anymore but that's very disappointing. I don't think i saw it go up past 4 hours at any given time.
 
Hey guys just a note don't look at your battery when your external display is plugged in... I made the mistake and the nvidia gpu was running... I was only shown about 3.5 hours on a full charge... so finally tracked that down... unplugged the display... mbp switched to the internal chipset and I'm back up to about 7-8 hours :)

was worried for a minute !

but man that nvidia gpu is drawing a ton of power!
 
My battery indicator is jumping around so much I can't even tell how long the battery will last. I've got open iTunes (though not playing anything right now), OpenOffice document, and Chrome with 17 tabs. I think I've been on battery power for about 2 hours and my battery is at 54%.

Is anyone else's battery indicator (time left) entirely inconsistent?
 
My battery indicator is jumping around so much I can't even tell how long the battery will last. I've got open iTunes (though not playing anything right now), OpenOffice document, and Chrome with 17 tabs. I think I've been on battery power for about 2 hours and my battery is at 54%.

Is anyone else's battery indicator (time left) entirely inconsistent?

definitely mine...absolutely inconsistent!
 
I'm only reading 1 hour and 9 mins with 59% battery life. I'm using Windows right now, which I know gets worse battery life. The only programs running are Word, Excel, and Google Chrome. Seems really low. Should I have it checked out?
 
apple fanbois need to shove off and stop "bragging" about 9-10 hours of battery life

I have a 15" i7 macbook pro with a normal screen
real world usage, doing nothing but word processing and a bit of facebook here and there I get about 5 hours 30 minutes, most of these tests dont have guys using it consistently, its just some guy sitting around looking up a site then leaving for a bit while their mbp goes to sleep they start up again etc.
 
apple fanbois need to shove off and stop "bragging" about 9-10 hours of battery life

I have a 15" i7 macbook pro with a normal screen
real world usage, doing nothing but word processing and a bit of facebook here and there I get about 5 hours 30 minutes, most of these tests dont have guys using it consistently, its just some guy sitting around looking up a site then leaving for a bit while their mbp goes to sleep they start up again etc.

in my humble opinion, it doesn't work in the way you suggest. I've OVERpaid (given it's internal components) because I want something different from the rest. Battery firstly. On the website, 8-hours wi-fi productivity...I want that. 7 hours fine too, but not 5. If i wanted 5, I would have bought a sony vaio. I bought a MAC.
 
in my humble opinion, it doesn't work in the way you suggest. I've OVERpaid (given it's internal components) because I want something different from the rest. Battery firstly. On the website, 8-hours wi-fi productivity...I want that. 7 hours fine too, but not 5. If i wanted 5, I would have bought a sony vaio. I bought a MAC.

Its a software issue that Apple needs to fix. Until then, your gonna get 5 hours.
 
I just did a idle test; I get only 5 hours doing nothing. Nothing running, screen at half brightness and wireless on. This is not good.
 
What exactly is everyone expecting? 9 hours on light usage is very easy. My roomate is getting constant 10-11 hours doing note taking with wifi on blue tooth off and brightness at about 3 notchs. Remember people flash isn't just youtube, its websites too. Go to a non flash website and surf and you should get 9 hours no problem. I'v always found it so odd how people expect to be able to use their laptop exactly the same they normally do to attain maximum battery life. Be smart close apps you arent using and stay away from flash!

I do not believe 10-11 hours with wifi on...it doesn't sound realistic. I don't believe they will go 11 hours just sitting with the desktop up with nothing running and no wireless on.
 
Its a software issue that Apple needs to fix. Until then, your gonna get 5 hours.

Aside from the 330 switching issues, how the heck did Apple get a 8 to 9 hour estimate if some folks here at getting 5 hours at half or less brightness, just idling?

I'd hope it's a software issue, but those idle figures may suggest otherwise. You can't use much less energy than you do whilst idling, unless the code that influences idle battery usage is it itself broken.
 
I was wondering if the software update 1.3 that Apple issued helped at all with fixing this problem? Their statement of what the update is for didn't mention battery life but did say something about graphics stability.
 
Aside from the 330 switching issues, how the heck did Apple get a 8 to 9 hour estimate if some folks here at getting 5 hours at half or less brightness, just idling?

I'd hope it's a software issue, but those idle figures may suggest otherwise. You can't use much less energy than you do whilst idling, unless the code that influences idle battery usage is it itself broken.

I'm getting 11 hrs by idling at 50% brightness..
 

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