New MacBook Pro 8-hour Battery JOKE!

[PandaOnslaught]

i think you might have a problem with your battery, although i dont have my 15" yet so i cant say, but my friend did just buy the 13" and we drove for like 6 hours state to state, and watched a movies the whole time, it didnt die and we watched at 70% brightness, still had about an hour to 30 mins left

 

[Zadillo]

Just as a comment, it seems like people are posting two different kinds of claims regarding battery life. Some are talking about how much actual time they are able to run their laptops on battery, while others seem to be talking about what the "estimated time remaining" says in the corner.

I think we can all agree that that estimated time isn't really all that accurate to go on? I've seen it indicate a much longer time than it actually delivers, while also seeing it sometimes say there is much less time remaining than it turns out there actually is.

If we're talking about battery life, it seems like we should be focusing on actual battery life, not estimated numbers.

 

[Josh.C.123]

odd, my new macbook pro on its first charge achieved around 8 hours!!! just installing apps, some youtube, and typing? however today it did about down to 4-5 hours i guess but that was backing up 60GB time machine, importing 20GB of pictures and web browsing? i guess if you dont push it 8 hours is easily achievable if not more!

 

[Zadillo]

odd, my new macbook pro on its first charge achieved around 8 hours!!! just installing apps, some youtube, and typing? however today it did about down to 4-5 hours i guess but that was backing up 60GB time machine, importing 20GB of pictures and web browsing? i guess if you dont push it 8 hours is easily achievable if not more!

Yeah, exactly. And yeah, I'd suspect that the constant hard drive access involved in a time machine backup and importing photos is going to take a heavy hit on battery life. Frankly, 4-5 hours with those activities is pretty impressive IMO.

 

[noah82]

That battery life is pretty impressive!

 

[doktordoris]

I find apple understate their battery times OP.

Calibrate your battery, then when it is full set the brightness to very dark, turn off the keyboard lights, turn the volume down, set it so the HDD spins down right away, turn off airport and bluetooth, ensure no other programs are running then open pages and just do some WP.

Then see how long your battery lasts.


doris

 

[SovOfFailure]

kind of worried

so yesterday was the first time i used my new MBP 15 i7 off the battery, i was running firefox doing normal browsing although i was downloading and uploading photographs to mobile me for most of the time i was only on for about an hour and a half. I started with 98 percent battery and ended with 65% for only an hour and half of use. what concerns me is that this was very light work i used firefox, ichat, and two finder windows. i had the brightness and backlight both turned down very low. Am i being neurotic or is this quite a bit of battery life for like an hour and half worth of work?

 

[SovOfFailure]

so yesterday was the first time i used my new MBP 15 i7 off the battery, i was running firefox doing normal browsing although i was downloading and uploading photographs to mobile me for most of the time i was only on for about an hour and a half. I started with 98 percent battery and ended with 65% for only an hour and half of use. what concerns me is that this was very light work i used firefox, ichat, and two finder windows. i had the brightness and backlight both turned down very low. Am i being neurotic or is this quite a bit of battery life for like an hour and half worth of work?

i suppose i should also state that the estimated times on my MBP are so far from actuality that it borders on faulty software/hardware. were talking 5 hours left on 65% battery. just doesn't seem right.

 

[ozreth]

I just bought a new MacBookPro 15'' and i'm extremely disappointed how Apple mislead how the notebook can run 8hrs without a charge. The most I was able to get was around 4hrs or so. Is anyone else noticing this also?

Also, I noticed the battery is not removable. My old MBP had a removable battery. This really sucks!

Everything else is great with the notbook, now have to decide what to do, if I should keep or return.

The batteries haven't been removable since around the end of '08. Also, I bet you dont have your keyboard turned off with your brightness turned half way down. Try that. Also, turn off wi-fi and bluetooth whenever you arent using them. Download a no flash addon for your browser.

 

[Zadillo]

i suppose i should also state that the estimated times on my MBP are so far from actuality that it borders on faulty software/hardware. were talking 5 hours left on 65% battery. just doesn't seem right.

You mentioned having Firefox open - if you had any pages open with Flash on them, that would have a significant impact on battery life. Just curious (if you have the iStat widget you can see what the CPU utilization is).

I wouldn't worry too much about the battery life estimates - that really isn't anything new. The bigger thing is to actually time how long you're able to use it on battery.

As other people have noted, if this was literally your first time running on battery, you may not want to read too much into it just yet anyway. People have pointed out that it can take some time for it to adjust/etc.

I'd try running the battery down a few times at least, try timing your actual usage (don't worry about what the battery life estimates tell you).

So far all we know for sure is that in an hour and a half you lost 35% of battery you first time running off of battery. Let's see how long the rest of that 65% takes, then see how long you can go using it from 100% to needing to be plugged in a few more times.

-Zadillo

 

[Hooksta]

I haven't changed any of the out-of-box settings on my brand new MBP 15" (i5) and after three days my battery indicator often reads I will get about 6.5 hours of life. I believe once I saw a 7 hour calculation at idle...but never an 8 or 9.

With Safari surfing on WiFi I am getting close to 6 hours. When I start working the laptop, loading music and photos it seems to drop to something like 4.5. Overall I am pretty satisfied...as I have never owned a Windows laptop that would get over 4 hours and that was with an bulky, extended batter.

I will need to search the forum for some battery saving tips. But to the original posters point, I haven't seen anything out of the box close to the battery life quoted by Apple.

 

[cluthz]

I dunno if you've tried it, but running Safari in 32 bit mode gave my old MBP 20-25% longer battery life.

With new battery I did manage to push 4hrs-4.5hrs on the Santa Rosa MacBookPro, which is pretty close to what Apple advertised it to be, with wireless surfing in Safari (in 32 bit mode).

 

[mac8867]

If we're talking about battery life, it seems like we should be focusing on actual battery life, not estimated numbers.

+1

 

[duo peach]

if you don't use the internet ,don't watch video,don't watch your dvds,don't play games. just to do some "typing thing",or just let it standby.im sure it can last more than 8 hours

 

[jclardy]

I've gotten 5 hours on my 1st gen Macbook. It was right after getting a brand new battery, but still it was quite impressive.

I'm thinking some of these battery issues are coming from the graphics switching. I saw a review that said that the MBP was choosing discrete graphics on many applications that don't really need it, including the web browser. So the GPU ends up taking more power than it should. This can be fixed in software though so hopefully they fix it before I get mine (And add an option to stick to only the intel integrated graphics in settings.

 

[Keleko]

*** It is not the battery at fault (most likely). ***

The discrete gpu is a bit... aggressive in activating. The 330M kicks in rather often, and it sucks a lot more power than the integrated gpu.

This article explains what is happening. http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/21/macbook-pros-with-nvidia-geforce-gt-330m-silicon-making-question/

It doesn't seem to shut off the 330M when it should. For example, if you watched a QT embedded video in a browser, the 330M stays active until you completely shut down the browser after watching the video. Or if you use iPhoto, it switches to the 330M. Bet you didn't expect that.

 

[cluthz]

I just got my 2.4GHz, Migration assistant running for the next hour i guess.

I have tons of rapports that has to be written tonite, so i'll post my battery results with running basic word prosessing with iTunes running in a few hours.

My first impression is that the computer screen is way too saturated, standing next to my Eizo LCD

 

[Jwalker9]

i just calibrated my battery last night, and the battery estimate now shows 7 hours 48 minutes rather than the 5 hours it showed yesterday after a full charge. Thats with screen at 50%, bluetooth off, and keyboard illumination off, wi-fi on. If that is accurate, I can def. deal with that.

 

[nconnella]

I also just calibrated mine and am charging it now. I'm curious what it will read when it's full.

 

[broadcast]

I've had my macbook pro for a few days now, and I calibrated it when I first got it. It's showing about 5 hours with just normal web surfing (nothing much with flash on it).

A little disappointed. I do have one question, my current battery capacity is 7225, and the original battery capacity is 6990... how is it possible that it's higher then the original?

 

[Tex-Twil]

Do you have a 7200 or 5400 disk ? It would be interesting to compare.

 

[EuroBrit]

I'm on about 50% battery on first drain and showing more than 5 hours left.

Quite impressed. This is on my new MBP with apparent 10 hour battery.

 

[Zadillo]

I've had my macbook pro for a few days now, and I calibrated it when I first got it. It's showing about 5 hours with just normal web surfing (nothing much with flash on it).

A little disappointed. I do have one question, my current battery capacity is 7225, and the original battery capacity is 6990... how is it possible that it's higher then the original?

OK, so we've established what the battery life estimator is showing you..... that's great.

Now though, the real question is, how long can you use your laptop on battery? Not talking about what the estimator tells you, but time your use of the laptop - how long does it last?

It's much more interesting to come in here and say "I used my laptop for 5 hours and then the battery died".

It will also help to mention other details like screen brightness/etc. that have an impact on battery life.

Also, just to ask, let's say that in your normal use you "only" get 5 hours on battery - is it disappointing to you because you often do need to use your laptop on battery for longer than 5 hours?

 

[BlindGoldfish]

I got 11 hours doing web browsing and word processing in Microsoft Word. This is with the new 13" mpb though. Screen brightness pretty low and no keyboard lights.

 

[Tex-Twil]

This article explains what is happening. http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/21/macbook-pros-with-nvidia-geforce-gt-330m-silicon-making-question/

oh that sucks. I hope apple will work on this more to at least allow to switch to the integrated card only.