Mac Book Pro battery life...?

[Kingsly]

A lot of people have been asking what the battery life will be for the Mac Book Pro. Seeing as how Apple has not been kind enough to post thier own results, I did some research and have reached some preliminary conclusions.

Lets start with some pointers:

A) 1.42 ghz G4 draws around 30 watts. (thanks Longofest)
B) 1.83 ghz Core Duo draws 31 watts.


Considering that the 15" PBG4 is 1.67 ghz one would have to assume that if anything the G4 Processor draws more power. On the other hand, the MBP has a 67% brighter screen, so there you go. I dont know the specs of the screen such as current draw (could someone find out?) but I assume it more than balances out. Then again, it may be an exponential situation where a little more power gives alot of brightness...?

Anyway, assuming the current draw is similar for the two computers we shall, without further ado, proceed to the good part:

1) The 15" PBG4 uses a 50 W/h battery
2) the MBP uses a 60 W/h battery

Soo...

The MacBook Pro should get the same if not better battery life than the 15" PowerBook!
I am guessing (hoping, praying) 5.5 - 6 hours of battery life.

 

[Dr. J]

I would doubt that the battery life will be that long. If it was, Apple would have listed that among the features of the MBP.

 

[Kingsly]

I would doubt that the battery life will be that long. If it was, Apple would have listed that among the features of the MBP.

Unless the screen draws some insane amount of power I doubt its less than the PB.

 

[Benjamindaines]

Unless the screen draws some insane amount of power I doubt its less than the PB.

Well it is the same brightness as the regular displays, so I would say it uses more power then the screen in the PowerBook. But all you have to do is turn the brightness down a little and you're good to go.

 

[AJBMatrix]

There are several things that you can do to cut down the battery usage. Like turn off wifi if you are not using it. And turn down the Brightness of the screen. You can also do things like shutting off the speakers that will help a little. If you have the computer on something that will trap heat in it will use more battery life. So keep it ventilated.

The CPU will clock down when not being used. The CPU can also turn off a core if it is not being used. All of these will help the battery life and Apple has always had really good power management ability with the batteries.

 

[Josh396]

I would doubt that the battery life will be that long. If it was, Apple would have listed that among the features of the MBP.

I think that's something a few people are looking over or forgetting about. Apple always makes sure to announce any improvement in any new product, which leads me to suspect the battery life is the same or even possibly worse. My guess is it will be about the same spot it is right now.

 

[AJBMatrix]

Battery Life: I talked to Dell about there 17" blah blah blah Core Duo. And they did not have any battery life specs up online so I called technical support and asked them what it was. And of course I had to call 3 times and got cut off once and transferred to a dead line the second time. But the 3rd time was the charm. I talked to a guy that seemed to know a lot about the Dell version and he said that with the standard battery you should get 4.5 to 5 hours. I had a Dell and that would be an act of God if that happened on it. But he said that you could add an hour with the upgraded battery. So if Dell is looking at "4.5 to 5 hours" probably "3.5 to 4 hours" then we should get at least 5 and ours will have a slightly better battery. And the battery power management abilities of Apple are far better than the MS ones.

 

[xparaparafreakx]

Just wait until the people get their MBP, then talk about it. I have learn to get used to haveing an extra battery in my backpack.

 

[asherman13]

I would doubt that the battery life will be that long. If it was, Apple would have listed that among the features of the MBP.

Unless they hadn't finished with their oh-so-thorough battery life benchmarks, and felt that having speed benchmarks were more important @ MWSF, so they ran speed but not power benchmarks.

Also, since the MWSF models were definately pre-production, (not just processor wise; why else would they wait this long to ship?) there's quite a decent possibility that the batteries people "tested" at MWSF weren't the ones people will be getting (perhaps those were Lithium Ion, while the new ones are...(checks insanely-dog-eared Technology Overview printout) Lithium Polymer.

 

[dblissmn]

I talked to a guy that seemed to know a lot about the Dell version and he said that with the standard battery you should get 4.5 to 5 hours. I had a Dell and that would be an act of God if that happened on it. But he said that you could add an hour with the upgraded battery. So if Dell is looking at "4.5 to 5 hours" probably "3.5 to 4 hours" then we should get at least 5 and ours will have a slightly better battery. And the battery power management abilities of Apple are far better than the MS ones.

Not that I want to burst anyone's bubble, but Dell's top of the line Core Duo laptop has an 80 watt-hour battery as opposed to the 60wh battery Apple has used. Even if you allow that Dell's wattage advantage is accounted for by the higher drain of Windows and a 17 inch display, I don't expect we're going to see the Apple doing better than this Dell for battery life.

 

[jacobj]

Can we not be a little clever here. Run a task on a 15" PB that hits the processor hard and turn the brightness off... give it a few minutes and then turn brightness to full! Take a reading as soon as you turn the brightness back up and then wait a while and take another reading to see what the difference is. Work out what percentage of battery time is given over to the brightness of the screen and then add 67% to it (worst case scenario). Then we can see if the extra power in the MBP covers it!

Only slightly scientific but worth a go.

What we haven't considered is the X1600 card in it...does anyone know what the X1600 draws also we need to know what the Radeon 9700 draws

 

[oldMac]

Expect Worse Battery life

Yes, Apple has generally been good with battery management, but that's a combination of Hardware + Software.

I would expect that Apple's Hardware+Software integration for something like battery management is not as mature for Intel as it was for PPC. Probably it will get better over time as newer versions of OS X become available, and the Apple and Intel engineers learn more about each other.

However, it's not reasonable to expect that 0+ year system, with roughly the same cpu wattage and a brighter screen would be on-par with a 4+ year mature hardware+software integration, unless the battery itself is significantly better.

 

[Mr. Mister]

Does the Core Duo have any sort of power scaling?

 

[excalibur313]

It is surprising that even though they are shipping the macbooks they still haven't updated their website. Could it be that they haven't arrived at the length they want and intend to tweak it further?

 

[jacobj]

X1600 draws 27W. 9700?

 

[AJBMatrix]

To dblissmn: Please know what you are talking about. And read my post before saying that I am wrong about something.

I talked to a guy that seemed to know a lot about the Dell version and he said that with the standard battery you should get 4.5 to 5 hours. I had a Dell and that would be an act of God if that happened on it. But he said that you could add an hour with the upgraded battery.

 

[jacobj]

It is surprising that even though they are shipping the macbooks they still haven't updated their website. Could it be that they haven't arrived at the length they want and intend to tweak it further?

Nobody has received confirmation that they are actually shipping. I think we should expect further delays and the lack of battery life is a sign of it. Or else the battery performance of the MBP is poor and Apple don't want to make it that public and will rely on people not researching such things further.

 

[AJBMatrix]

Everyone here really looks to the darkest possibility of things don't they. It is nice to hope. Plus the battery is better, the CPU takes about the same power and has better control over power functions than the G4, the video card uses about the same power, and the screen should be able to be turned down. If you do the standard power saving options I do not see why you would have much less battery life. Now if you are going to be gaming or something major, you should always carry the cord with you. I have never had a laptop that can last more than 1.5 hours playing a game.