Q: Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

Same here. Just installed it and at 95% showing 6 hrs remaining.... I have seen it at more. Oh well, I'll keep an eye out but no remarkable improvement here so far.

I can happily report that after a few discharges the battery on my Macbook Air late 2010 11' has returned to the advertised normal and is holding between 4-5 hours depending on usage.

Have installed Mavericks, but my Battery Life hoverers on 4 hours.  Mid 2010 MBP.  VerY disappointing

However, on my IPad 3 after all the upgrades , battery gone up to 12 hours from the average 10.

After having upgraded to Maverick battery performances haven't improved at all. It is now even worst if it could be with merely 1 hour to 1:30 hour of battery capacity !! on a mid-2009 MacBook Pro. Below screen capture speaks for itself. Max capacity is now 59% for 405 cycles after upgrading to Maverick when it was "still" 63% under the already poor performances of ML for 404 cycles.

Of note the loss of 20% max. capacity in 16 months .. whilst having undergone only 80 cycles. Difference is that the 2012-06-24 benchmark was under Lion. All the following under ML but for the 2013-10-26 under Maverick.

I too have been waiting for mavericks to solve my battery life problem which appeared under ML. I've installed mav but no appreciable change in battery life. A very disappointing outcome. I called support, they suggested I call and make an appointment with the apple store. I hate being enslaved by my gadgets. How much time and energy should I allow this to consume? Over 2 k for this toy. Hours spent troubleshooting clean installs etc. etc.   Ridiculous.

You have a lemon. Fix it or be ruled by it. It has more to do as to your perception of the problem than the problem itself. If you car breaks down you take it in right? I get 6-8 hrs on Mavericks, and more than ML. But my hardware works.

And if you choose not to listen to the Apple staff then the problem, fundamentally, are oyur decisions not the 2k toy. Mavericks is OK. Your machine is not.

Runaway applications can shorten battery runtime ... - Support - Apple

I know this is old but it may happen to others. When my pc seem to run hot I used air in a can works great