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battery life on macbook pro

post #1 of 18
1/12/06 at 11:18pm
Thread Starter 
How long do you guys think the 256 mg video card version last ??
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post #2 of 18
1/13/06 at 12:14am
i would take the life of a Dell i9300 and add about 20%, that should be a fair estimate for the life...
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post #3 of 18
1/13/06 at 1:14am
Thread Starter 
you think it will outlast the current pentium m line ?? there are some that last 4 to 5 hours
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post #4 of 18
1/13/06 at 1:29am
Acer TM 8200 got about 3,5h so apple will be in about the same range
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post #5 of 18
1/13/06 at 1:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Soccerji
you think it will outlast the current pentium m line ?? there are some that last 4 to 5 hours
why i added teh 20% is because the dell is 17", the MacBook is 15", thus less screen to backlight = more power savings, had nothing to do with the CPU
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post #6 of 18
1/13/06 at 1:36am
LCD takes up to about 33% of the battery, CPU - 10% and GPU!!!!! only - 8%
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post #7 of 18
1/13/06 at 2:08am
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarekS
Acer TM 8200 got about 3,5h so apple will be in about the same range
3-4 hours would be an estimate then.

Does the Acer and Macbook have the same battery type/rate/kind/etc...???

Hope they improve it. Im hoping for a 5-6 undervolt(if u can undervolt it) and min brightness.
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post #8 of 18
1/13/06 at 7:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by TeeJayDM
3-4 hours would be an estimate then.

Does the Acer and Macbook have the same battery type/rate/kind/etc...???

Hope they improve it. Im hoping for a 5-6 undervolt(if u can undervolt it) and min brightness.
given that that such utilities interface primarily at the hardware level instead of the OS, it seems like it'd be a pretty quick fix to get an undervolt in the works.
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post #9 of 18
1/13/06 at 10:34am
There may be less lCD to backlight, but remember one of the points that Steve emphasized was that the screen is BRIGHTER, so I doubt you will see to much savings there.

Ars took a look at the battery meter on one on display at MW and unplugged it, it read 3 hours. The running theory though is that it was probably set up for full performance to show off and wasnt optomized for battery at all. Plus the fact that those battery meter readings arent always the most reliable, take it with a grain of salt.

Seablade
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post #10 of 18
1/13/06 at 10:37am
i am guessing that if the battery is large enough (read: 8 cell) if you undervolt, turn off wifi/bt and dim the screen, it will put you up at 5 hours or so. But figure it will most likely be a 6 cell, so don't expect much of anything beyond 4 hours.
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post #11 of 18
1/13/06 at 1:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by seablade
There may be less lCD to backlight, but remember one of the points that Steve emphasized was that the screen is BRIGHTER, so I doubt you will see to much savings there.
I would be surprised if you weren't able to dim the LCD for power saving. Very surprised.
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post #12 of 18
1/13/06 at 3:04pm
Oh so would I, just not sure how much you will be able to dim, even on my G4 there is a point where it goes from bright to off.

Seablade
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post #13 of 18
1/13/06 at 6:16pm
I have a feeling that Apple will not settle for anything less than 4 hours of battery life in power-saving mode. More than likely you will be able to dim the LCD, slow down the CPU and GPU, possibly undervolt it, and either turn off WiFi or BT or both.

If you undervolt the lappy and turn the LCD down to around 60% brightness I expect you might be able to get around 4.5 to 5 hours even with WiFi on (this is while browsing and maybe Word processing of course).

The only reason I say this is because the last Powerbook got about 3 to 3.5 hours of battery life, which to many Powerbook owners was simply not enough at all. So I have a feeling that Apple will try to increase the battery life to at least 4 hours. They might even put out another option to have a higher powered battery. If the standard battery is 6-cell, then Apple could put out an 8-cell version that would still fit flush with the lappy. The 8-cell would at a tenth of a pound or so, but the MacBook would still be under 6 lbs which is quite resonable if you think about it.

This is all just speculation of course.
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post #14 of 18
1/15/06 at 11:22pm
I get around 3:45 out of my acer 8104 with a single battery. I get 5ish on my M70 with dual batteries. Not too bad for models with large, bright LCDs. I would expect the macbook to get exactly the same battery life as any other 15" yonah clone with the same size battery. One gripe? No media bay to add a second battery...a feature I pretty much require on my laptops (and have since my first PowerBook 540C.

All in all the pc clones will win the battery life war because of the large number of power optimization tools out there (RMclock, CHC and others) that let you undervolt and shift speed on the fly.

Personally, I'm torn. I absolutely love the form factor of my wife's TiBook G4 800Mhz, but the MacBook has a low LCD res, no media bay for 2nd battery, will be waiting on x86 ports of mac code, and iffy windows support. My laptop is my main system, so windows is required for work apps, vmware, and games.
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post #15 of 18
1/17/06 at 1:59am
I would say 2.5 to 3.5 hours, On the xps gen 2 that has the 256mb ultra card you get about 1.5 to 2 hours max. The GPU does rob alot of power from the Bat if it's 256 MB. The screen on the macbook will probably be much brighter then my display so that has to be taken in account as well. I just can't see this thing lasting waaay longer than my laptop thats going to take up the same or less power then this new beast. I would say 4-5 hours is out of the question. Keep in mind also that the battery on the Xps and the 9300 are much larger than that of the macbook pro's rather SLIM battery.

P.S.
I speak from the experience of my personal laptop that has a bright display and a 256 mb graphics card
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post #16 of 18
1/17/06 at 9:06am
The 256 MB nature of the GPU doesnt really have anything to do with the performance itself. It's what kind of GPU- I assume you have either a 6800 go, 6800 ultra or some form of 7800?
Well, the X1600 in the MacBook uses much less power than that.

Also, the Dell has a 17" screen, and the MacBook an 15.4". The bigger screen means that more backlighting needs to be used, and as such a much larger drain on power.

If you look at machines like the Acer 8200, which have a larger battery than the MacBook- 87w for the acer, 60w for the apple, you can see that unless Apple pull some magic beans out/upgrade the battery, they will not reach the 3.5 hours that the Acer has.

Although, there is one tihng that confuses me. The apple is specified as 60 Watt-hours- which to my mind implies that it can serve 60 watts in an hour, rather than 60watts being that maximum power it can supply. Any thoughts?
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post #17 of 18
1/17/06 at 11:03am
I read online that a user that was at Macworld went to a prototype MacBook Pro, unplugged it, made sure the batter showed time rather than percentage, and it was at around 4 hours. But then again, this is just a prototype.
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post #18 of 18
1/17/06 at 11:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jk_baller23
I read online that a user that was at Macworld went to a prototype MacBook Pro, unplugged it, made sure the batter showed time rather than percentage, and it was at around 4 hours. But then again, this is just a prototype.
a prototype, and u can't trust a static number like that. it will inevitably change as u continue to work on the system.
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