MBP: '5' hour battery a lie

I have a new (late 2008) 15" macbook pro.

I noticed apple advertised "5 hours" of battery life with this model (if all the energy saving options are on [no keyboard light, minimal screen brightness, and using the 9400gt])

This sounded outstanding. I upgraded the hard drive to a 320gb@7200rpm, expecting a slight additional drain to the battery.

Running OSX on battery with 2/3 brightness, bluetooth off and airport off while watching an AVI movie gets me a whopping 2 hours of battery life. This is unsat. Should a 7200rpm hdd and slight brightness kill 3 hours more then advertised?

Has anyone else experienced similar issues? I need to find out if I have a faulty battery or apple is exaggerating their claims.

Thank you.

 

OS X indicate that I have close to 7 hours when I have my macbook at lowest brightest, wifi & bluetooth off, opitimize battery

 

Watching any movie drains the battery a lot, they mean just typing word docs.

 

your signature says you have a black regular macbook. unless this is old information, this is not comparing apples to apples.

 

Well, watching a movie will drain your battery much faster...

 

You're right, they're different systems, but the new MBP should have even better battery life than the old MBs.

 

I get about 3 1/2 hours with 9400, BT, Wifi, full screen brightness and backlit keyboard @ 1/4 brightness surfing the internet or editing photos.

 

Watching the movies will cause a drain in battery life, but I didn't expect it to be that much! Try it without the movie, and just other normal things such as NBR, or a word document, and see if there is any difference there.

 

I just watched about an hour of SD xvid encoded video and I'm getting a battery reading of 3:30 (so 4:30 in total battery life). This is on any early '08 MBP, back light at 2/3, wireless off. I can easily get 5+ hours of battery life out of my notebook under light load, wireless off, and the screen dimmed. This is in accordance with Apple's battery specs. With other brands (like an Asus Z96J) I've found I can never get the manufacturer's stated battery life even when the laptop sits idle. I would check activity monitor to make sure you don't have a background process consuming your CPU.

 

i can easily get 4 hours with 1/4 brightness and wifi on.. just browsing and messaging

 

The new MBPs do have more efficient technology, but that's negated somewhat by, I believe, the use of slightly smaller batteries.

 

best thing would be contacting apple

 

I get 5 hours on a 6 cell with my ThinkPad T400. The 2 hours you are getting on your MBP is strange. If it is not a defective battery, check any background apps that is hogging CPU or hard drive.

 

The 5 hour mark is reached only with optimum settings..i.e all settings set to low.

 

it is actually both good and bad, check out some battery information and you notice apple uses lithium polymer, they can sustain battery capacity better than lithium ion, but they will deteriorate down to dead when it reaches its lifespan; and it is shorter than lithium ion too.

so you get better sustain battery life but replacing battery more often

 

I can be working on my school work.. with wifi on.. screen about half brightness.. pretty much just running Safari and MS Word... and have gotten over 5 hours... had to plug in with a warning after about 5 hours and 20 minutes.

 

what do you use to play your avi's? there is no native program in os x that plays avi's, im afraid, so you have to use plug-ins for quicktime or download something like VLC... at any rate, that will be a big drag on your battery. i find that my battery life is about the same as yours (just recently watched knocked up and a bit of superbad on a flight before my battery died).

 

Even web browsing I only get 3 hours on minimum screen light, no keyboard backlight, and wifi on (light browsing).

 

Basically everyone lies, but Apple more than most among price-comparable manufacturers in my experience - although not to a heinous degree.

My formula for Apple runtime - which has proven very reliable - is that in my definition of power saving: Display very dim usually 2 segments, wifi on, BT on as necessary to tether (in which case wifi off), regular office automation apps and web browsing with VPN some of the time = 1.4 ratio for claimed vs actual. Divide claimed by 1.4 to get 'genuine working' ekeing runtime. The fact that I get a very consistent result does point to my runtime tests being at least as consistent as Apple's, if more realistic.

In particular, it makes the 5:50 in power saving runtime of the 17-incher - all of mine are thankfully matte so can still be seen in brighter ambients at lower brightness - slightly less than useful given the lack of a removable cell.

And talking about matte, given the 13/15 inch Crapbooks you may have to lower that estimate further depending on use because of the glare-o-matic screen and the need to up the brightness to 'power through' lighting conditions where the glare outstrips the image.

 

... and you don't really do anything with the machine.

 

some machines better than others i guess.. since as i posted ive done plenty with my MBP and gotten over 5 hours.. using it constantly... now what i was doing could have easily been done even on a netbook, but was still using it constantly

 

I get 8 hours on my new MBP 17 inch model, but most of the time I get 6 hours. I did not blame apple for that. I think that 6 hours is awesome!

 

2 hours battery life on dvd playback is very good!
you shall read some reviews and get a general idea about how bettery functions.

 

I get around 4-4.5 hours on my MB, and that's more that enough for my needs/wants. I'm really happy I can get that much.