MacBook Pro Battery Life

[JazzMan10]

I have had my macbook pro since the last week in june and, using coconutbattery, i found out that its already down to 93% of its original capacity.

This seemed like a pretty fast drop in battery charge. Unfortunatly i think it might be my fault. I keep my mbp in my room and tend to keep it plugged in for about 6 hours a day, but then i usually run it on battery for about 2.

I am getting 2:45 min of bat life with airport on, better energy savings selected, and screen brightness at a low level that i can still read.

Is this normal? What can i do to keep my bat healthy?

 

[MacRumoron]

i only get 2:30 hour battery life if im lucky :/

this is with bluetooth and airport off

 

[s0x™]

Surely keeping it plugged into the mains would only charge the battery and then the laptop would run of the mains connection rather than the battery

Which MBP is this 15" or 17", I'm awaiting my 17" nice to know the battery life compared to apple's 5 hours or so

 

[JBot]

the 5 hours apple states is measured with the backlite off, the screen brightness lowest, and nothing running.
The pb said the battery would last was 4.5 hours. The day it was out of the box, longest it lasted was 3 hours.

 

[coastertux]

Have you been calibrating your battery per Apple's instructions once a month?

 

[gadgetgirl85]

Hey its better than my Toshiba which barely lasts an hour now! though I will be getting a replacement battery for it. As someone asked have you calibrated it?

 

[Anonymous Freak]

the 5 hours apple states is measured with the backlite off, the screen brightness lowest, and nothing running.
The pb said the battery would last was 4.5 hours. The day it was out of the box, longest it lasted was 3 hours.

Uh, it can't be both 'screen brightness lowest' and 'backlite off', since the screen brightness is controlling the backlight.

I've found that with 'maximum power saving' (airport and bluetooth off, backlight on minimum, having my documents already open so the HD can spin down and stay off,) I can get about 4 hours on my 15" MBP on a regular basis. If I let it turn the backlight off when I'm not active, (about 50% of the time,) I've stretched it to 5 hours. I have a screen shot of the battery meter saying 5 hours, 19 minutes. That was essentially the 'max saving' above, but with the backlight off the whole time.

With AirPort and Bluetooth both on, screen on lowest brightness (but backlight still on,) and constant web browsing, I can get 3-3.5 hours of life.

Then again, I was also able to squeeze 5.5 hours of 'usable' life out of my 12" PowerBook G4 (867MHz,) and could stretch it to almost 7.5 hours with the backlight off.