I have had this MBP for a week now and I feel like every 3 hours I have to charge it because its drained. I use the brightnesss close to the max I know this has an effect on it. But cmon how can they proclaim something has 6 hours of battery life when it comes no where it yes you may to set it to lower settings but who wants to use there laptop with low brightness which wont make them see anything. Iam a little disappointed because I thought the battery life would last alot longer then this.
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Didnt Apple claim these new MBPs battery life would be upwards of 6 hours.
- Thread starter JSmoove05
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Many manufactures exaggerate their laptop's battery lives to match the current trends of the market. This is done by timing the battery life when the machine is idling with no apps running, the screen backlighting turned all the way down to almost off, etc. Of course in practice a wary consumer should be skeptical of any top-of-the-line machine that claims to get near 6 hours of battery life. Battery technology (or the price of better technology) isn't quite at that level yet.
the tests they do at Apple most likely are at lowest brightness setting running no applications.
you can be sure to expect 6 hours if you were to do that. not exactly a lie on Apples part... but if you want to attack Apple about it, then you'd have to do the same for every other computer manufacturer that do the exact same misleading tests
Im not attacking them im just saying. Do they really expect anyone to use there computer with a black screen and doing nothing on it? It doesnt really seem realistic or idle for people.
i couldn't agree with you more; however, it is the only way to market against the competition.
if Apple were to release actual use battery specs, they would look horrible next to the specs from other manufacturers...
no high performance laptop is going to get close to 6 hours battery life (unless it's a brick that you can't consider even close to portable).
sad, but the technology (or as mentioned above, the cost of the technology) makes it so we'll have to deal with it for another year or so
Well, seeing every other computer manufacturer does the same thing, would you rather Apple claimed 3 hours battery life, when every other computer, even the huge "portable desktops" that would be lucky to get one hour claim 4-6 hours? Apple's sales would decrease.
It is expected that battery life will vary greatly depending on what you are doing. Apple just uses the best case scenario. If you're inside, just listening to music (even better if you're listening to music off your iPod) with the screen brightness down because you are inside with lights dim, and word processing or surfing the net, you'll probably get 5+ hours. If you're outside, with the brightness on full, playing HL2 in Bootcamp, you'll probably only get 2 hours.
killr_b: The Santa Rosa 15" Macbook Pros have improved battery life. The old ones had 5 hrs claimed, the new ones have 6 hours. Like the Macbooks. The 17" is only 5.75 hrs.
You get 6 hours by clocking your CPU to 100mhz, turning your screen to minimum brightness, and not using wifi and bluetooth.
All electronics manufacturers do this to make their products look better. Yes, it's a bit deceptive, but if Apple didn't do this and posted something realistic, it would make their laptops look much worse in terms of battery life when compared to everything else.
What model?
I would imagine that a new SR MBP 15" should be able to play a full LOTR movie (or other 3+ hour movie) if you turn off the room lights, turn down the brightness, put the computer in better battery life mode, and use headphones.
Otherwise, give us an example of a 1" thick, 2.5 kg laptop with similar performance to the MBP that can play a 3 hour DVD on one battery charge?
And you can buy a spare battery.
Sorry mine is a macbook 2.0. Not a pro. I just did the battery update down load from apple and I will see if that helps.
I thought all "battery life" mode does is turn the screen off after 1 minute of inactivity, rather than optimize the whole computer for better battery life
I would assume that on newer computers it would tell the CPU and GPU to hold off on bumping up to higher speeds so easily.
"Your MacBook Pro is preset to automatically reduce its processing speed during
periods of light processing activity when using battery power, thus reducing power
usage. The setting that determines this is the Normal option in the Optimization pop-
up menu of the Energy Saver pane of System Preferences. During periods of high
processing activity, your computer will automatically switch to a higher processing
speed. To conserve the most battery life, choose Better Battery Life from the
Optimization pop-up menu. Be aware that choosing this option may affect your
computer’s performance. To set your computer to use its highest processing speed at
all times, choose Better Performance."
From the document "Macbook_Pro_Users_Guide.pdf" from the Apple Support Website.
Nah, it's not supposed to be that difficult to milk the full estimated time out of your computer. Basically, you just can't use it. I think if you turn off your Wireless internet, turn brightness down, let the hard disks stop spinning, and leave the computer running without using it, you can get pretty close to the full battery life.
I just bought a brand new SR MBP and I took it to a cafe last night and used their wireless internet. I turned the brightness down to the second to the lowest level, was using the internet normally, and I was editing word processing documents. When I got to the cafe around 9:00, my battery was at 97%. When I left at 12:30, my battery was at 10%. I figure that with all the WiFi and disk access I was using, that's pretty good.
I just bought a brand new SR MBP and I took it to a cafe last night and used their wireless internet. I turned the brightness down to the second to the lowest level, was using the internet normally, and I was editing word processing documents. When I got to the cafe around 9:00, my battery was at 97%. When I left at 12:30, my battery was at 10%. I figure that with all the WiFi and disk access I was using, that's pretty good.
i think 3 hours is excellent considering i have a compaq laptop with a quarter of the power of mb or mbp and it last 45 minutes on a good day with stuff running.
Was there not a plan for the next generation (3.2) to have better battery life? Anyone knows anything about this?
Regards,
K
Regards,
K
I get roughly between three-to-four hours out of my MBP. That's letting it handle brightness itself, with Safari and several tabs/windows open, iTunes through headphones, a VPN client, a telnet session, Adium and a .pdf file or three open.
For the spec and the size, I couldn't really demand more.
For the spec and the size, I couldn't really demand more.
You were lucky. I had a power cut a few weeks ago, and I couldn't watch any moves on my MacBook because they were all stored on an external harddisk (no power) on my server (no power). No Internet either because - guess what - my router had no power.
On the other hand, if you don't have a flashlight, an open MacBook can light up a dark room quite well.
I too have been a bit disappointed in the battery life of my MBP. using low brightness and only wifi, I managed to pull out just shy of 3.5 hours....
Maybe they should just say:
Battery life (max/avg/load): 6/3.5/2.5 hours.
Or so, and noone would be surprised, anyway, why are people? It's the same components as any other PC have, more or less, so expect similair battery life time, and battery life times isn't that great on high-end pc laptops.
Battery life (max/avg/load): 6/3.5/2.5 hours.
Or so, and noone would be surprised, anyway, why are people? It's the same components as any other PC have, more or less, so expect similair battery life time, and battery life times isn't that great on high-end pc laptops.
Because that would be just as bad as only listing the battery life under load. Sure its a bit underhanded, but Apple has to list "up to 6 hours of battery life!" to avoid criticism for its "low battery life" when compared to other manufacturers even though in reality the real battery life over the laptops is similar.
Plus, most knowledgeable computer buyers (and that certainly isn't a majority of people) today assume that battery life figures in that range are exaggerated. There were many posts immediately after the SR MBP's launch that commented on how long the battery life would actually be.
it's all about comparison. the only true way to compare battery life on different machines is with no application running. it's the same with cars and fuel consumption. they test it on a test stand without takeing account of the aerodynamic aspect of the car. imagine they do it outside on a road: day1 heavy wind, day2 no wind at all and so on...
yeah i am not too happy with my MBP battery life because i only get about 3 hours of life out of it on a good day. now i know they are very different but my 12" powerbook got betwen 5 and 6 hours of battery life for general use with the screen dimmed a bit. The MBP seems like it lasts just enough to take to a class or two.