Battery Life. What to expect?

[JMies419]

For all of you macbook and macbook pro owners out there, what kind of actual battery life can one expect out of the machines? I know the apple website lists specs of what the machine SHOULD get, but what kind of battery life do these machines REALLY get? I am still going back and forth on which system I should buy and believe it or not, the battery life does make a big difference in my decision...I am on the road a lot and I dont always have a place to plug in my notebook! If you have actual average hours of use specs, that would be great! Thanks!!

 

[mdickson]

I get 4+ hrs with a white 2.0 with 1.25 gigs of ram

 

[Shotgun Pete]

THIS REVIEW has a great rundown on the MB battery life in heavy, moderate and light usage. It gives an acurate rundown of the time and which applications are running at the time.

 

[macwhack]

I'm hardly getting 2 hours on my brand new macbook. what can i do to increase it? havent calibrated it yet

 

[Temujin]

havent calibrated it yet

Well that is the first thing you should do to improve the battery life. So MOVE YOUR ASS!!! as Scooter put it

Further measures to improve battery life
1. Dim the screen
2. Turn off all unused features; wifi, bluetooth, usb fridge and so on
3. Set power management to Better Energy Savings
4. Limit stress on CPU by quitting all unused apps.

-> OP: My MBP get 4 hours under best conditions
(no wifi, no bluetooth, dimmed screen - well not doing anything at all)

 

[Star Destroyer]

i have started just leaving my macbook plugged in, but i unplugged it just for this reply..

Currently running adium, and a couple tabs in firefox, with brighness at 5 squares, on better battery life, i get 3:35....its at ike 48 cycles and 93% of what it started out as...

I am happy with it, considering my gf's Acer barely gets an hour after being 1 year old..

 

[pilotkid]

As of right now my battery is showing 3:25 mins 97%, bluetooth off, i have about 25 cycles on my battery! Oh and screen is on as bright as it goes