Battery runtime of late 2008 15" MacBook Pro with SSD

[InfoTime]

What kind of battery life should I expect out of a 2.5 year MacBook Pro?

It's a 15" late-2008 model (first unibody model) with a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo and 4 GB RAM and a 128 GB SSD. I started the day with a full overnight charge. Used it for about 25 minutes at my last appointment. Been sitting here at lunch and working for about 1:40. Started the day with it showing 3:05 remaining. Now I'm at 0:44. Guess that makes about 2:00 use so far and only have 0:45 left.

If I Option-Click the battery meter it says Condition:Normal. I acquired this machine from the estate of one of my clients. I don't know how well the battery was cared for. I do know that the machine saw pretty light usage as this was one of many Macs he used.

Energy Saver prefs say Graphics - Better battery life. I've been doing mainly Firefox web browsing with it for the last two days. An XP VM has been running under Fusion but not really in use (maybe this is draining just being there).

Anyway, it looks like I'm getting 2.5 hours. I believe this machine was marketed as going for 5 hours. Is it time for a new battery or is that just the way it is?

 

[GGJstudios]

Make sure your battery is properly calibrated, so your readings are accurate. This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:

Apple Notebook Battery FAQ​

 

[Panch0]

I have the same model, and I don't think I've ever gotten over 3.5 hours.

Do the battery testing/calibration as suggested in the previous post. The good news is that this model MBP has a replaceable battery!

If you start out showing ~3hrs and you end up at ~2:45, that seems like a pretty reasonable estimate.

I have always found that a VM running but idle will be a battery vampire. Windows likes to run maintenance tasks (like Virus Scans) when it is idle. Since you have an SSD, a Suspend/Resume cycle in Parallels should be relatively painless and will ensure that your idle VM isn't draining your battery to no purpose.