How long does the battery on your 15 alu powerbook last?

I have a 1.25Ghz PB with the 5400 Rpm harddrive in it and can easily get 3 to 3.5 hours if I am just surfing the web or typing stuff into TextEdit. As soon as you start really pushing the CPU (Final Cut for example) the battery life drops off. Switching off Bluetooth and Airport helps some if you aren't using them.

 

Don't know what you're doing dude... I've got the 1.25GHz AlBook (slower hard drive) and I can get around 4-4.5 hours when taking notes (bluetooth and airport off, brightness down all the way, only word running, blah blah blah).

 

I get somewhere north of 3 hours. Having said that...

Battery life comparisons can be quite misleading - it will vary significantly based on activity (Web browsing is much lower impact than using Final Cut Pro, for instance). You really need to compare with a standard set of applications being run for the same amount of time and the same amount of disk access etc.

Maybe we should compare times while watching some long movie like "Lawrence of Arabia".

 

If your battery life is only an hour and a half, and you are only web browsing or other light processor tasks then you should try and recalibrate the battery. Make sure the powerbook is fully charged. Run the powerbook on battery power until you get the warning message that the battery is running low. Keep using it until it eventually goes to sleep. Reconnect the power until fully charged. See P18 in your Powerbook manual.

 

I normally get upwards of 3 1/2-4 hours on my 1.25 GHz/5400 RPM HD configuration. I have actually gone over 4 hours now that I have that battery update that was released last month but I've also gone below into two hours when doing more intensive stuff such as importing CDs into iTunes and listening to music.

 

My Powerbook was totally convinced that it onlty had an hour and a half of battery life at first too, but now I can get it to last an entire school-day between sleeping and taking notes. Run a Software Update and make sure you have all the latest stuff, that's how my PB figured out its lifespan.