15" MacBook Pro i7 battery life mediocre

You have calibrated it?

Don't tell me you +*actually believed*+ the 8-9 hour battery spiel the specs state??? Cut that in half and you're right about fine. 8-9 hours on a Core i7 CPU MBPro...Apple must be on some good stuff these days.

Short of dimming the screen to blindness levels and practically doing nothing on the system, 8 - 9 hours was a stretch anyway and most of us know it. I feel your pain though.

Mine is getting about 4 hours for just internet browsing. Brightness all the way down, wifi and bluetooth on. Pretty terrible.

hypo luxa: If you can get 6 hours of battery life while spending 40% of that time browsing Flash websites, that's no cause for complaint — it's outstanding! Flash on the Mac is a horrendous resource hog — true junk software. This is why the recently-released iPad was designed to preclude running any Flash content.

The rate of drain of your battery will vary widely depending on what the computer is doing from minute to minute. If you're visiting a web site or sites with Flash content that you allow to run, your battery will be devoured at a blistering pace, but when you're just reading and writing email, very little power will be drawn. Leaving a Flash website running in a hidden browser tab or window while you do something else is like driving your car around town with a gaping hole in its gas tank: not something you want to do.

The time-remaining display in your menu bar will vary even more wildly than the rate of battery drain, because it reflects a constantly changing estimate based on what the computer is doing at any given moment. It may predict 3 hours remaining whle you're visiting a streaming video website that also has Flash ads running, and 7 hours a few minutes later when you've quit your browser and are writing something in TextEdit. It will never be based on what you call a "rolling average" pattern of usage. For a much more dependable view of your battery's current condition, switch to the percentage-remaining display. That at least is an actual readout rather than a guesstimate.

Apple didn't guarantee you 8-9 hours of run time doing anything you like. It described the conditions under which you could expect *up to* that kind of battery life: extremely light-usage conditions that are normal for very few users.

I am getting mine tomorrow and will have a look myself. As another poster mentioned, perhaps these figures are with features off and in a dim light. I expect there are details in the small print.

How does one go about calibrating his battery?

Chuckm747,

You can calibrate the MacBook Pro's battery using the steps found in [this Apple knowledgebase article|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/9036.html].

Best of luck.

I have the same problem - the battery lasts (at best) about 3 & 1/2 hours to 4 hours with just web surfing and most decidedly non-intensive document editing, screen brightness 50%, bluetooth off, wifi on. All of this after calibrating twice and resetting the PRAM, as well.

I brought the machine into the Apple store today and they're replacing the battery. We'll see if it was just a faulty battery or if there's a deeper issue.

Yesterday I fully charged my comp and then let it sit and drain at 50% brightness, bluetooth & sleep disabled and airport enabled. I did not use the computer at all. After 8hrs it was at 15% battery life.

Are you telling me that my 3 year old MacBook Pro has the same real world battery life as a shiny, new i5/7 based laptop? Muahahahahahahahahaha. Consider yourselves clowned by Chairman Mao ZeJobs.

Sorry about not getting back. Sleeptime over here, but I see that part has now been answered.

Thanks Laundry Bleach! I will calibrate as soon as I can. Chuck

Thanks Graham!

No problem. My MBP delivery has been delayed for about 18 hours: drat!