Unibody MBP 15" Graphics Card and Battery Life Question

[David Ormesher]

Just bought a new MBP Unibody and I'm loving it so far. My friend has the one with the single graphics card and he's claiming 6-7 hours of battery life on a single charge with the screen lit a little under half. I set mine the same way and I don't get as much battery life. I have the one with the dual video cards. Is that going to cause the battery to drain faster and if so, can I disable the second video card when I'm not doing intense graphics processing?

First time poster, long time reader.

Thanks!

 

[airplaneman]

You can only have one video card active at once. With my MBP, I am seeing 8 hours of battery life surfing with the screen at minimum and the backlight off. Average is around 4-5 hours, because I like to crank up the backlight and stuff. It's sooooo beautiful.

 

[JajoPGH]

You can only have one video card active at once. With my MBP, I am seeing 8 hours of battery life surfing with the screen at minimum and the backlight off. Average is around 4-5 hours, because I like to crank up the backlight and stuff. It's sooooo beautiful.

What do you mean by turning the backlight off? Are you talking about turning the brightness down all the way? Or are you talking about the lighted keyboard?

 

[David Ormesher]

I would assume he's talking about the backlit keyboard.

The time that the indicator fluctuates pretty widely sometimes. Yesterday it seemed to stay on 2 hours and 30 minutes for about an hour or more. Needless to say, the battery performance is absolutely killer!!! blows the doors off of a brand new macbook pro battery.. so nice not to carry two spares with me for long flights.