Seven hours is a lie

WatchTower

WatchTower

WatchTower

Soldato
Joined
9 Jan 2005
Posts
4,427
Location
Stoke-On-Trent
It's bull crap when they say the MBP battery lasts seven hours. I'm lucky if I get four fully charged. Even at the times when I have screen backlight on one bar. the sound muted and Bluetooth disabled and the most taxing thing I do is brows the net.

I understand the battery not lasting long if I'm rendering video or gaming but I bet it wouldn't last seven hours left on the desktop doing nothing. I hate it when companies lie.
 
got 6 out of my 13 MBP on the train the other day, charged it up in the hotel when i got to london, i think it all depends on the heavy/light use and lighting conditions but Apple arent going to through out a random number like 7 hours without a bit of testing
 
Also which ones is it? If you have one of the units with two vid cards your battery life can get hammered by apps switching to the discrete graphics card.

My 17" I regularly get 6 ish hours from.
 
My mbp at new was quoted 6 or 7 I think, you can only get that with wifi off as wifi kills EVERY laptops battery.

New mine could do 3 hours 20 mins of Football Manager 9 :) Now I get about 2 hours of FM11, party as 11 is more taking and party as the battery has down 700 cycles.
 
Have a look at Cody Krieger's great bit of software for controlling the graphics card in use. Keep it on the integrated you should find the battery life improved.

Shame you have to use the discrete chipset in Boot Camp however, no way to select the integrated as far as I know.
 
Both my 15" MBP and my other halfs 13" MBP the batteries are fine. We regularly leave them off charge (we just let them sleep, never switch off) for several days at a time and do lots of web browsing, emailing etc on them during that time. Easily get over 4 hours out of them unless doing something really taxing.

I do usually just use the integrated card, as rarely have need for the other one. That might help.

I'd be very unimpressed if I could barely hit the 4 hour mark though! :(
 
I challenge you to show me a company who doesn't exaggerate their battery life claims.
 
1) All laptop manufacturers lie about the battery life of their products, because they run a 'minimal functionality' test which is bare bones functionality and the display off, then give that figure as the 'life'

2) Its partly down to the power saving features of the OS, in moments of use, and what tasks you are doing at the time.

My Macbook pro easily out performs the missus's laptops battery under the same criteria. Ie, if we both start internet procrastinating at the same time on battery, mine way way out performs hers.
 
I get more than 7 hours easily on my 13inch, BT turned off, brightness low and mostly just web browsing with the odd hour long avi played.

And BT turned off with low brightness isn't me trying to conserve power, just don't use BT for anything and the screen brightness is just right.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom