Air Travel with a MBP

All I can say is that I often travel from NYC to OC California and the flights can be long I mean it's from one side of the country to the other. And for the most part I've always been a PC user, until recently when I started creating threads in this section did I acuire a MBP 15" All I can say is where have I been??? all these years MBP are awesome for traveling and especially long flights or even car rides. The battery life these things give with the integrated battery life is phenomenal combined with watching a film the whole way or doing some work. The battery life on about half brightness (I use an anti-glare) on integrated graphics survived an entire flick with leftover of around 30%... I've never been able to do that with any other PC on my flights from one end of the country to the other. I know Ipads can probably do this as well if not even better but I just wanted to say when traveling apple products are really the best to go with, no doubt.

 

to be fair, anything else rated for 6+ hours would also be a good pick... it's not just apple

 

Ok fine, but even as an owner of like 3-4 alienwares I would still go with a Macbook Pro over almost any laptop on that special list. Acers, Lenovo's, etc....

 

I do think that Apple's battery life estimates tend to be a little better than their competition. I don't know if modern notebooks released from competitors are any different but I have gone through four different Windows notebooks in the last 13 years. I had a Dell with a 12" 4:3 display and I went with that specific model because I could swap the optical drive out for a 3.5" floppy disc or even an additional battery. With the second battery installed, Dell's advertisement specifically stated that it could go for 3 hours without needing to be plugged in.

That was all in the days before wi-fi and yet the notebook would barely creep out 90 minutes before turning itself off. I then had another Dell notebook with a 17" display. It was advertised at being able to achieve 3.5 hours of battery life since I paid extra for the whole Intel Centrino package. Again, I would normally achieve around 90 minutes. After that I had a Toshiba tablet that was supposed to be able to get 5 hours on a single charge (it had a really dense and heavy battery) but I could only ever get 2 hours. The 13" MBP I purchased has been the only notebook to ever come close to its advertised battery life numbers and even surpass them.

I am sure there are other models from different manufacturers now that have similar performance but Apple was the first company that was able to do that for me. In fact, every mobile Apple product I have ever owned was able to either meet or exceed Apple's battery life numbers. The only one that couldn't was my 3G iPod released in 2003. Apple said it would go for 8 hours on a single charge but I could never get above 6.

 

Dude I just had two faulty AW M14x'a that drove me to get a 15 inch MBP. Only thing I regret is not having the antiglare Hi Res screen, but i like the fact that the glossy screen has glass in front of it whereas the matte screen was exposed for some reason. Regardless, why did I wait so long? It's like night and Day, now when I use a windows machine for work I keep using the trackpad gestures and realize that it's a POS Windows machine, what a difference an Apple makes!!!!! =-)

 

Well, with Windows on Bootcamp the MBP only gets around 2-2.5 hours of battery. But with OSX I can get at least 6 hours from just casual browsing.

The only Windows machines that I've ever used with similar battery lives are the Asus UL series and the Acer Timeline 1830T/3820T.

 

How do you use a 15" MBP on an airline tray table when the person in front of you leans back? I much prefer my Slate 500 on long flights with its keyboard folio. My Acer 3820TG also has a much smaller fingerprint than your MBP and will last, at least, as long and possibly longer on its original battery if it is nursed. On top of that, I can snap in my spare battery and get up to 12 hours of battery life on fairly bright display levels, accessing the hard drive and using the dedicated GPU. Try that with your Mac. My wife has a 15" MBP and is it a very nice notebook, but can't hold a candle to my Acer 3820TG as a travel computer.

 

I never had a chance to use battery for more then 4 hours but battery consumption was no different in mac os and win7 for me. At least not smth i would notice. So 2 hours looks like you have a faulty battery or smth.

 

+1, I could get 5-6 hours in Windows with my 2010 MBP 13.