Macbook Pro Battery Life New 17" Model

Although folks are just starting to receive the 17" MBPs, there are a few posts about their initial impressions of battery life. The longest I saw listed was from a person who had run for 6.5 hours before shutting down, and still was showing 1.5 hours remaining capacity.

It sounds like they hit it pretty close to real achievable numbers.

According to what I've heard from Apple, it is SUPER IMPORTANT to "calibrate" your battery upon initial usage.

I found this a little weird as there was nothing about this in any of the documentation I've read. Is is just common knowledge that I hadn't learned of yet? If so, weird, because I work as a tech.

Well considering that the battery has adaptive charging and chips controlling it I can see it could maybe be important. I wouldn't have thought it's vital but probably does either put a bit more time on it, report time more correctly or simply last longer before needing replaced.

Message was edited by: iainkay

i calibrated my battery to the last word on the directions... i still only get on my best day 2.5 hours... if i'm actually editing 90 minutes...
someone suggested a fan widget, but i can't find anywhere anyone who claims the fans are sucking their battery dry... some i'm left to ask, is anyone getting even 6 hours out of their battery...

When you say editing, what do you mean? Editing video? Note that the long, or near max usage times typically involve a dim screen, dim or no keyboard lighting, and very light use. Anything that keeps the cpu working solidly, and keeps the hard drive or DVD drive spun up will drastically reduce battery life. Less so will be screen brightness and keyboard lighting.

As an example, with my 15.4" (2.53GHz machine, when sitting in a meeting with an airport connection, screen brightness only 3-4 bars bright, keyboard lighting on the lowest setting and with just a browser open and maybe email and TextWrangler for notes, I can comfortably get 4.5-5+ hours out of my battery. If I start running analyses in R or MatLab though, pushing the cpu to full load and keeping the HD spun up, and that drops to less then 2 hours pretty easily.

editing for me is two 7200 sata drives running on phantom power... i don't expect 8 hours... what i expect or at least hoped for was 6 hours just doing standard office work... i haven't even cracked 3 hours... it's a brand new 17 inch macbook with the mythical 8 hour battery... even allowing for marketing i figured on 6.... twenty five percent less than claimed... open to any suggestions on how to improve things

Jeff: You'll never get 8, nor probably even 5, hours if you're using the "Higher performance" setting in the Energy Saver preference pane. That setting selects the faster, much more energy-consumptive 9600M GT GPU — probably what you want for video editing. The "up to 8 hours" battery rating (take note of the words "up to") assumes you are using the "Better battery life" setting in Energy Saver and doing word processing, email or light web browsing (not streaming video or highly multimedia-intensive sites) via wifi, with Bluetooth off, your display at half brightness or less, your keyboard backlight at minimal brightness or turned off, no applications or nonessential processes (including third-party extensions and plug-ins) running in the background, no CPU-hogging Dashboard widgets turned on, Spotlight indexing complete (so not taking place any longer), and no peripheral devices connected (many peripherals cause the machine to use energy keeping in touch with them, even if they are externally powered). If you can't get at least 5-6 hours of *actual, measured* run time under these conditions, contact AppleCare.

Do not pay any attention to the estimated run-time remaining that you see displayed in the menu bar. It is only a projection based on how you've been using the machine recently, not a definitive reading or a promise. It can be very inaccurate, either high or low. The only figure to pay attention to is the actual, measured working time the battery gives you.

What is "phantom power," please? I've never seen the term before.

Message was edited by: eww

i'm at the apple store now... under a load test the 8 hour battery lasted a whopping 90 minutes... everyone here agreed to replace the battery... i was told the reality is i probably will never get 8 hours... on my best day 2.5 hours... i was told if this battery *****, return the laptop for a refund...

" So if you have any real world experience you care to share with me about it I'd appreciate it."

There is a long running thread about this subject, and I do not understand why you felt it was necessary to start a new one.

...under a load test the 8 hour battery lasted a whopping 90 minutes...

I'm not surprised to hear that, but I don't understand why it was decided to test the battery life by loading the processors heavily. That's like testing the EPA gas mileage rating for a passenger car by measuring its actual gas mileage while towing a large boat on a heavy trailer over the Rocky Mountains. But I'm glad to hear they're going to give you a new battery, even though it isn't clear yet that the one you have isn't working properly. I hope you fare better with the second one.

And again, what is "phantom power"?

Message was edited by: eww

I get 4 hours and 45 minutes on my Late 2008. I follow the calibration routine.
Dale