macbook pro battery question

[zpartan]

recently purchased my new macbook pro 15" basic model...my battery lasts about 5 hours with web surfing..10-20% video sites like youtube but not heavy video watch just surfing and then rest of the sites are facebook, gmail, cnn, and other news sites..Basicly using gmail and surfing on a few othre work related sites mainly not video based...No other appication is running like imovie, or itunes or etc. The screen brightness is a few points below the max level....I am just wondering if 5 hrs of battery time should be expected or is something not normal?

ps why are they advertising it as lasts upto 7hrs, is that really true?

 

[AppleTecFan]

Its is true if you have Wi-fi off, If Wi-Fi is on you get less battery life

 

[miles01110]

10-20% video sites probably knock off an hour of battery life, so I'd say your battery is fairly normal. I've gotten up to 9 hours on mine.

 

[Maxpilot]

Are you just going off by what the battery meter says? Or are you actually using your computer until it dies? The meter fluctuates based on what you are doing on your computer at the time. The meter logic shows that based on the amount of power in the battery, that if you keep doing what you are doing this very minute, you have X number of hours and minutes before the battery is dead.

On the day I calibrated the battery on my computer, I started using it about 10 AM. I never turned it off, however it did go to sleep a couple times while I was not around (doing a few other things), and my computer lasted until around 7 PM before it shut down completely. I used it pretty much like I would in the office on a normal day. I then left it unplugged for the rest of the night per the calibration (at least 5 hours unplugged). I plugged it back in the next morning and let it fully charge.

Depending on what I am doing at any given moment, my battery meter might say I have as much as over 8 hours left and the next moment when I might be doing something different, 4 hours left. It can then bounce back up to 8 hours left the next minute.

A good resource is http://www.batteryuniversity.com.