Battery life on new MBP in Windows?

Hey guys, just had a quick question that I haven't seen answered yet about the refreshed MBP's.

I know with the 2nd-gen MBP's in XP the battery life was awful (like 1-2 hours), probably due to PowerPlay not being supported in the X1600 as of yet; so what I'm wondering is what kind of battery life do the 3rd-gen MBP's get in Windows (both XP and Vista)?

If anyone knows, or if someone with a SR MBP could check, that would be great.

 

Nicholie was able to get 3hrs on his MBP while he was running iTunes, Firefox, Adium, & Mail with full brightness.

 

Yes it seems to be better. I've just had over 3.5 hours running on minimal power settings on Vista under BootCamp.

 

Very good to hear!

Anyone else? I'm trying to get info from a handful of people so I can average it.

 

hah i dont think an average is what you want here.

this isnt like a specific high accuracy calculation.

you can get an idea though- 3 hours with moderate use and max brightness, maybe pushing 4 hours with a dimmed screen

 

Alrighty, thanks for the info!

The main thing I wanted to know was if battery life in Windows was more in line with OS X (obviously not going to be exactly the same) and not just 1-2 hours.

Good to know. ^^

 

Hum... I have a couple questions to ask related to this.

I am running XP Home on my new MBP, and I have tried everything to get a longer battery life out of it (turning off bluetooth, wifi, dimming the screen...), and I can still barely get two hours out of the battery. In OS X, I can get more than four...

A second question for you guys... I just bought my MBP less than two days ago. I've gone through three battery cycles, but my battery health is down to 97% already, and I haven't hardly used it! Any ideas on why my battery health has gone down so much already?

 

that doesnt sound good, wrightc23 said he got 3.5 hours in vista under minimal power settings and your getting less in xp, nearly half, i would of thought xp would have a longer battery life, someone please clarify this?

 

i don't know about vista, but in general my experience with xp power management is that it sucks. so, if vista is any better, you are probably going to see improvements in battery life.

having said that, there are lots of 3rd party apps and various means of getting better battery life. waterfall is a good one for reducing cpu power usage (and heat) and it's pretty simple to use.

i'm planning on using my desktop overclocking tools to underclock and undervolt the cpu, and at least underclock the gpu for mobile use, to compare it with the built in speed step technology that intel uses.

 

I only get 2 hrs on my 2nd gen MBP in XP. I think Apple broke something in the X1600 video BIOS, since I'm pretty sure that the original MBP had PowerPlay working in XP.

In terms of the 97% battery life I wouldn't worry. The sensor usually varies a bit. When my battery was new I fiddle around with it like draining to 93% then charging back up sometimes gets the max to read 100% again. Or sometimes draining to 5% and then back up. Anyways it was kind of random. Now for some reason for the last while, mine has only gotten up to 94% permanently, especially after the last battery firmware update. But, I'm not that worried since I seem to get very similar battery runtimes anyways.

 

bumpiityyy

 

I have also personally noticed that the MBP runs much hotter while ideling in XP than in OS X. (The screen hinge is just warm in OS X, whereas in XP it's get really, really hot.) This leads me to believe that (like commander data mentioned) the powermeizer feature for the 8600 GT is off in XP, whereas in Vista it is on (thus the extra 1.5 hours of battery). Which is funny because I went into the Nvidia control panel and it says that powermeizer is on. Weird.

I'll be upgrading to vista in a week or two here, so I guess I'll find out if I notice a difference.

 

so how many hours on average is everyone getting in vista with the new mbp's? and under what circumstances.

 

Go into the nVidia Control Panel one time when you're on battery and see what's going on. Alternatively, you could download never nVidia drivers (which feature a different Control Panel) which will show you clock speeds of the card. It's supposed to drop to somewhere in the 100MHz range or something when it's on battery and not being used.