Can someone give me some estimates on both the Macbook and the Macbook Pro and how long I can expect to use both on battery? Say I'm on wireless surfing the net, and working on a document. Nothing fancy. Thanks
Slightly over 4 with the Macbook on low display settings. Add a little under an hour for the MBP 15' and a bit more than an hour for the 17. THat's been my experience anyway.
The MB actually gets better battery life than the Pro, not the other way around. This is cause of the smaller screen and no video card. Anyways, my MBP averages about 3.5 hours of normal use. Here's an article to read more, though.
Is it odd that my iBook G3 is getting far better battery life then my friends brand new Macbook (I get about 3-4 hours, he gets about 2 1/2)
Wow- the MBs battery life is worse than the iBook? Why is that the case? Seems to me that with a new design, better battery life would follow. I've gotten over 6 hours out of my iBook before.
Faster CPUs, more energy draw. 8 batteries that are about 8 months to 1.5 years old. Not one of them gives me more than 2:40 on a full charge anymore.
my MB runs much longer What do you all have running? I use my MB mostly for travel, and I get over 6 hours battery life. That's using it to read big PDF files and write reviews, with the screen down low and wifi off. The disk gets accessed from time to time, but is spun down more often than not. Maybe not the normal usage, but it's what I need, and I like it. Numerical processing, wifi on, reading CDs, or turning the screen up high use the batterry dramatically more, but still it's usually up around 4 hours.
I have two batteries for my MBP 17". I regularly "condition" them according to my owners manual, and after just 1 year of ownership, I still get about 3 - 3.5 hours each. I probably use my MBP ~10 - 12 hours per week, though.
My battery is full charged, and listening to music, surfing the net, and IMing (with the screen all the way down) gives me an estimated 3 hours and 51 minutes, which is probably about a tad optimistic. Real world is about 3 and a half hours, I would guess. I almost never use my battery all the way though. 15" Macbook Pro. Usually I'm either at a power outlet, away from an outlet for just an hour or two, or gone for so long that a 5 hour battery wouldn't do me any more good then my 4 hour battery. If battery life in a concern, how often are you usually away from an outlet for over 3 hours and less then 5? Ya see what I'm saying?
It's not always about "being next to an outlet", its about convenience. Not having to plug the laptop in everytime I use it...and that means maybe I use it for an hour and pack it up. Now the next time I use it I'm going to get 1.5 hours before I'm low on battery, this is a typical scenario for me with laptops.. I just don't keep them charged all the way all the time because its a pain. Doesn't matter either way, thanks for all the feedback it just means I'll buy a spare battery!
at school, running word, adium firefox and mail,i have two 2.1/2 hour classes and my macbook is good enough for it but i ll have to charge it after fo rmy next three hour class for sure, i usually end up durning off airport bluettooth and only using it whne i need to take notes in the second class though or it ll die for sure...
I have a 15" MacBook Pro less than 6 months old and a 15" PowerBook (1.67 Ghz) and overall the older PowerBook is a better computer for browsing. Even though it's older, it battery life is significantly better, it seems a bit more reliable and responsive when waking up from a sleep, and runs a bit cooler. My MacBook Pro screams past my PowerBook when doing Matlab math analysis. It has 3 gB of RAM and a 200 gB hard drive. It screams past the fastest dual processor G5 desktop computers. In fact it may even outpace a desktop Quad G5 desktop computer with 4 gB of RAM. But it gets super hot within minutes, runs it battery down quickly, and uses a noticeably bigger 85 watt power supply.
about 3.3 hrs for my rev A MB, wi-fi on, default screen brightness setting. my 4000mah acer only last about 2hrs and 2 minutes anyway.
I can get 4 hours of use before recharging on my Black MB. So much better than the old PC laptop that I used to have where I had recharge every hour!