Power usage with external LCD monitor?

Hi All,
I'm wondering if using my MBP with an external screen would significantly reduce the laptop's battery endurance as my 5 months old MBP seems to have lowered its battery endurance to approx. 2.5 hours from the original state of 5 hours. in System Profiler the battery appears to still charge to almost full capacity, so I am wondering if external screen is the major factor in reducing the time the battery lasts.
Thanks,
Harold

Harolzoidium wrote:
I've always try my best to unplug AC whenever the battery is fully charged and only reconnect to AC when battery is low.
Unfortunately, what you're doing is bad for your battery. First, there's no need to unplug the AC when the battery is charged. Charging stops with the battery is full, and doesn't initiate if the current charge is 95% or higher. Full discharges are bad for your battery. Lithium batteries should be used frequently but lightly. The practices you describe are applicable to older nickel-based batteries, but detrimental to the newer lithium chemistry.
Is the charge reduction from 5 hours to 2.5 hours within 5 months reasonable?
Not unless you're racked up a LOT of cycles. Check your cycle count in System Profiler (Apple menu > About this Mac > More Info > Power).
More likely, there's something using a lot of CPU power in the background. Check Utilities > Activity Monitor > CPU tab, set the pop-up menu to Active Processes, click on the CPU column to sort, and see if anything is using a high amount of CPU capacity.
For more advice, see my User Tip: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1764220

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Message was edited by: rndm

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Power usage with external LCD monitor?

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