Less than 5 hours New Macbook Pro

Question

I thought the new 15 inch Macbook Pro was supposed to do something around 8-9 hours of battery. I am getting less than 5 with mild use (internet browsing, hulu). Is anyone else having this problem? Should I call Apple about this?
William Dovale

Answer 1

Hey!
Also- we have to be careful with the new graphics chips. In theory they're great, and I really like the idea, but it will take a while to get the sweet spot right. The new graphics chip will cut that time considerably, because its still pretty hungry for power. If you want to find out which of your applications fire up the 330M then you (as far as I know) have to open system profiler, then go to Graphics/Displays and then see whether Intel HD or the 330M as 'colour LCD' listed at the displays section at the bottom.
Open a program and then hit apple and R in the system profile window, if the colour LCD isnt in the Intel HD graphics box, that means that the faster graphics chip has been activated. This is an issue, because I hadn't realised, for example, that skype uses some of the 'advanced APIs' which make the new graphics card chip in. So as soon as you open skype (you dont even have to log in) your machine will continue to run off the more power-hungry 330M until you close it.
What I find interesting is that it seems only to look at the program and not at how many resources its pulling. For example, i've fired up so many HD steams in safari that my machine has been unable to process them all. Yet still it hasn't switched over to the 330M in that instance because 'safari' doesnt call for the advanced graphics APIs.
So far the ways i've managed to trigger constant reliance on the 330: (I can only speak for me 2.53)
-connecting an external monitor
-skype
-iPhoto
-Photobooth
-Garageband
-iMovie
Programs which do not exhibit this behaviour include:
-Safari (so far havent been able to trigger 330M at all)
-iTunes (even when using the visualiser hasn't triggered)
-iChat (doesnt trigger unless your webcam is engaged for a call or whatever)
-Mail
-iCal
-Spotify
-Quicktime (only engages the 330M when videos are loaded, not when program is merely open but not doing anything)
-VLC (only when playing videos- just as quicktime)
So basically- just check out what's running on your system. Skype seems to be glaring issue for me at the moment. Everything else is using the 330M conservatively, whereas skype, which im sure doesn't need the power of the 330M at all times, makes it continually run, which will bring down your battery life.
I'm sure this will easily be fixed -probably from skype themselves rather than apple, but that is merely speculative. For now I just wished there was some utility we could use or keep in the system tray or dashboard which would tell us which graphics card is running. Even some mention in activity monitor would be great..
Running the screen at 65% brightness and with the energy saving settings at default, my macbook pro has got about 7 hours out of it.
Flash-rich websites, javascript and unnecessary processor cycles will all contribute towards a real-world reduction of battery life. And the glossiness of the screen really doesn't help either.. haha...