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hookem12387

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 30, 2007
428
0
Austin, Texas
Any idea when we'll see how long this thing actually lasts? I get about 4.5 hours on my current "5 hr battery". I'm curious how much better the new one really is.
 
I wouldn't *want* a battery benchmark yet. Wait until people have had the things for more than a day or two so they can accurately assess the performance.
 
15" macbook pro, bought yesterday.

Discharged the battery full once, then charged it back up.

Time: 3:30.
73 watt hour, on the 9400m.
Full screen brightness.
Surfing the web, reading some pdfs, not downloading anything or playing music, fan is dead silent, did some skype for about 45 minutes. Watched 3 min of terminator salvation hd trailer.

By comparison:

Dell Latitude E6500 (macbook pro led panel, matte, comparable panel)
windows 7
56 watt hour battery, intel 4500hd integrated graphics
Same conditions (full brightness, surfing, reading forums, a little chatting)
Unlike the mac os, I actually could use power saver mode and disable cd drives, etc...
4 hrs

I was hoping for better from this battery. It may well improve, however, so the jury is out. But it's not magical. It's absolutely better than the last generation and the gen before that simply b/c it's bigger. I was curious at the diff b/w operating systems, and in all my tests I have never found that macs yield amazing battery life at all. Perhaps undervolting will give me some more juice. I call bachelor of science (bs) on 7 hours of battery life. You have to increase the screen brightness on these glare screens or you'll go nuts.
 
You should test the battery more than just one day to come to more conclusive results.
 
You should test the battery more than just one day to come to more conclusive results.

Agreed. I think that it will continue to improve, but FWIW, engadget is using half brightness but is watching an hd movie and getting 3:46.

I'm thinking that surfing half-brightness, word processing, chatting...could get you to 5 hours at most. I don't for a second believe 7 hours.

A typical 84 wh battery that are 9 cells for other laptops like Lenovo don't really get 7 hours (though like Apple they are guilty of blatant lies) so I wouldn't expect a 73 wh battery to get there, either.

What I've decided is that: it's a 73 wH battery, doesn't protrude, lasts a really long time before losing capacity (unlike 4-5 months for my other batteries), and is still in the lightest, thinnest 15" notebook around.

Plus it runs os x, which admittedly I couldn't care less about...until I went back to Windows. Then mac os x felt like a good old friend.
 
Plus it runs os x, which admittedly I couldn't care less about...until I went back to Windows. Then mac os x felt like a good old friend.

This is the best part. Everyone complains about Apple this or that now-a-days until they go back to Windows. Are we becoming spoiled brats?
 
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