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😀