Is MBP battery life affected by rEFIt?

Folks:
Things have generally not needed any attention on my MBP, recently I started the process of partitioning the HD to try to get a Linux OS going along with the OSX side. There is the recommend to download a boot app "rEFIt" ??? as part of that process, when I did that the instruction was to reboot a couple times, and not knowing the ins and outs of it after I rebooted and it loaded the rEFIt boot window, I closed the clamshell for a few days. When I tried to start up a few days later the battery had almost completely discharged, so I had to plug it in to get it to work at all. I then discharged the battery completely and let it sit over night before recalibrating it. A second interval of a few days of not using the MBP again showed the hazy screen with a few dots like the volume control showed as I tried to start from sleep, this time logged into the OSX login window . . . battery down to 18% . . . .
Battery is the OEM batt in this unit which is about 1.5 years old, I have calbrated the battery a couple times before all this happened, but is this a known life span issue with the OEM battery?? Or does having this rEFIt app somehow pull more juice when the computer is asleep?? It's a bit alarming to lose so much battery, usually when I'm working with it, it's plugged in, and at night it sleeps unplugged and logged out of the User and in the OSX login . . . so most apps should be off and not pulling too much juice. Seems like not too long ago the computer could sit/sleep for quite a number of days without losing such large percentages of power. I looked in "About this Mac" in the power tab and the battery status says normal, but forget how many cycles it should get out of its life and what kind of power numbers it should have.
Thanks for any thoughts,
e.e.p.

Hi w,
willingfoe wrote:
i'm looking at a new MBP 17" and assume that the extra power of the i7 processor places some additional demand on the battery life of the machine ...
Compared to what?
does anyone know for sure or have any kind of data?
Compared to your current MBP, it actually has longer batt life (more advanced batt technology).

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Michael9009 wrote:
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This is from Apple.
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puzzledsean wrote:
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