Standard "real life" battery power for your macbookpro 15.4" 2.66 320GB 5,3

[lukielala]

Hey all you mac addicts there. I just gotten a macbookpro 15.4" 2.66GHz, 320

GB the second 15.4" model myself after my financial status allowed me to take

the plunge. Anyways, how's the battery life working out for you guys in real

life. Mine has been like 2 hours +/-? It's that like normal? Mine's only like 2

days old. Lol on battery, i only run, firefox, mail, avast! antivirus for mac,

messenger, itunes. In the background only smcfancontrol beside the usual

stuff and it goes flat kind of fast in my opinion. How isit for you guys out there?

 

[man02195]

gets better with time. mine's 3+ hours, today it's been 2-1/2 hours and says I have just over 1 hour remaining. energy saver = on, bluetooth, smcfan = off while on battery, brightness on medium.

 

[angusslo]

i also have the same unibody mid 2009 as you and it lasts for 7 hours with speakers off and keyboard lid off and screen brightness to half. also I do as little as possible flash when on battery. bluetooth is also off on battery. few apps running:
mail, safari, iTunes, addres book, iCal, preview, pages 09, skitch, utorrent.

BG apps: SMC fan control and alarm clock 2.



MBP is from october 09

 

[Koronis]

I have the same MacBook pro, the only time I really use it on battery is at school. Mostly light browsing and word processing. My battery life is ususally around 5 hours. If you want better battery life, make sure you select better battery life in the power saver preferences. That turns of the peer hungry 9600 gpu and uses the 9400. I find I only need the 9600 for games.

 

[lukielala]

lol. sounds awesome but when im in school. i dont think my battery can last me tt long, as im a design student i'll be probably be running alot of adobe programs. haha. oh well

 

[ARF900]

1. Calibrate your battery

2. Get rid of avast and possibly fan control, waste of resources.

3. Turn down the screen brightness and keyboard backlights if you dont need them

4. Turn off the 9600, for 90% of tasks you really dont need, even if you think you do

5. Turn off bluetooth and time machine if your not using them

 

[fehhkk]

With the 9400M, I get around 4.5 to 5 hours with medium brightness, wifi and bluetooth on.

With 9600MGT, around 3.5 to 4 hours.

I have dual drives, an SSD and a 7200RPM drive. With the stock drive, I'd probably get maybe 20 minutes more.

 

[lukielala]

is avast! really a waste of resources? Cause im running dual os on my mac. Im putting it there as a sort of "insurance policy". Smc has really helped to reduce the heat issues that all mac users are familiar with. Sorry but what are the proper procedures for the battery calibration?

 

[ARF900]

Honestly I am surprised to here that avast even works on a mac, macs dont get viruses like windows PCs do, your chance of getting a virus on mac is similar to the chances of you sticking your hand in the haystack with your eyes closed and pulling out a needle.

as far as smc, ive never had any heat problems with my MBP, if you need it, you need it, but if you can live without it it might save you some power. the more apps you have running the faster the battery goes down.

Calibration Guide: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490 to do this turn off all powersaver settings and just play a really long movie while you sleep, when you wake up it will basically done. Make sure you follow the second set of instructions on that page. Calibration will help you more than anything else, especially the first time you do it on a new machine.

EDIT: sorry i didnt catch you were running dual OS, if your running windows then yes you should use avast buy you only need it while in windows.

 

[lukielala]

awesome. Guess i'll uninstall avast on my mac and save me some nifty space.