Poor battery life Macbook pro late 2011

You are never going to get great battery life while watching a DVD. The mechanical aspect of the DVD player draws a lot of power, not to mention the high processor draw of rendering video constantly for several hours. 3.5 hours of casual browsing may or may not be normal, depending on the type of sites you are visiting. Any site that uses flash, flash banners, or any type of video will drain your battery at a very high rate. Just keep in mind that Apple's battery ratings are a little exagerated in that they are achieved under absolute ideal circumstances.

Just got my MBP 15 two days ago. The battery life is pathetic (worse than my MBP 15 from 2008). I'm returning it. I get about 2 hours of basic surfing, etc. at half brightness (who uses half brightness?). I think Apple way over promised and it's frankly false advertising. I saw a doc on the website that said in some cases people get 9 hours. Maybe with the disply off??? This is one of the first times I feel completely ripped off by Apple.

I agree I have just purchased my first Mac Book Pro being a PC user before this. The 15" model with i7. I am not happy with the battery life at all.

I purchased my first Macbook Pro 15 inch (2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor Late 2011) and I have to say, I am confused with the whole battery life thing. Mine keeps changing...I mean, the percentage decreases moderately but, the remaining hours increases/decreases??? But I did realise once my Macbook warmed up to room temperature (or above) I would get like 5+ hours from 50%-60%

Because it is continually taking little snapshots of how you are using it, then using that usage to estimate how much time is remaining. Think of it like a race. at a full sprint in you have 1 minute in your tank at best, but if you slow to a light jog you can continue for maybe a half hour. Speed up a little and maybe you can go for 15 minutes. The time remaining indicator is a lot like that. If you find it too confusing, switch it to show percentage only, which is a more linear measurement.

Oooohhhh, ok I get it now. Thanks man!

Sooo....my less than one month old battery has already stopped charging. It's been hooked up to power adapter just so I can use this POS OS. But get this: this morning I had 88% charge, which dropped to 14% while I worked on installing Logic Studio and some other software, but within half an hour or less, I got the warning I was running out of JUICE!!!

Now it says Not Charging, and it indicates is has a 3% charge. The little green light went orange when I plugged it quickly back in, but went to green in a couple minutes...very wrong. So I looked at what my battery report was and freaked.

I need to get this thing replace under warranty, right. It sits on a fan cooled base of plastic, so it's not like I am trying to warp the MBP before I figure out what parts of LION I can get rid of. I am so mad at apple for the first time since 1990!!!

But I will be gentle with the guy behind the genius counter, altho I will ask him for a free second battery in addition to replacing this lemon.

Before I head to the store, anyone know if I can reset the not charging error by dumping a plist or running a battery conditioning procedure/app? Yes, my 15" MBP on Snow Leopard often got a couple hours of hard use without a charger magnetically umbilicized to it, too.

GB

This is on par with the Macbook Pro line in general. Battery problems are endemic to the Macbook Pro. I currently have the late 2011 Macbook Pro 13" model and it has never held a charge longer than ~2 hours. Prior to this machine, I had a 17" Macbook Pro with a removable battery, which I had to replace no fewer than three times due to the overwhelming heat of the machine's processor causing the battery to physically warp and distend until it was too bloated and deformed to fit its slot. I love Macbooks as far as their functionality and their interation into the MacOS ecosystem, but batteries and battery-life are Apple's Achilles heel and an issue that they have never managed to get right.