MacBook Pro Battery Life

Apple Computers claims that the MacBook Pro battery life for their new series of machines runs between 9 - 10 hours, but is this a claim that is backed up with firm evidence? The truth is that Apple Computers, like all other computer manufacturers, exaggerate these claims in order to boost the profile of their products, and this is something that many consumers regularly fall for.

The battery life that Apple puts forth is recorded in conditions where the machine is not doing anything at all, so therefore it lasts longer. All the computer sellers do this, so there is a semblance of parity in the industry, but what this inadvertently means is that innocent and ignorant consumers get taken for a ride.

If Apple claims that the battery life is 9 - 10 hours, (which is a rather tall claim indeed), you should know that the real battery life will be about half of it, if you are using the machine for a variety of applications that most people would. Heavy software being run on the computer takes a toll on the battery, and so does any media content. Additionally, if the number of applications you have running is large, the battery life will suffer as a result. Now Apple cannot predict what all applications you will be running on your MacBook, so most people are left disappointed with the performance of their battery, and they mistake this for poor battery life.

MacBook Pro: New Configurations

In the MacBook Pro 2010 series, Apple has changed the processors in these machines, from a Core 2 Duo to either an i3, i5, or an i7 processor. Only the 13 inch MacBook Pro comes with a Core 2 Duo, whereas the 15 inch and the 17 inch models have your choice of processors, amongst these. They claim to have conducted many tests, to devise a way to make these new processors increase the battery life on these machines. These claims do not seem far fetched though, because these machines have now become very powerful, and have amazing configurations, and still manage to give us about 4 - 5 hours of life. This is rather impressive, and Apple just seem to be going from strength to strength.

Few Tips

In fact, if you actually subject your computer to lighter use, then it is possible to stretch your MacBook Pry battery life by another couple of hours. Keep the following tips in mind in order to enhance your laptop battery life.

• Turn off the Bluetooth and Wi-fi functions on the laptop.
• Turn off airport mode on the laptop.
• Keep all discs out of the DVD drive.
• Turn off the backlit keyboard.
• Mute the volume leveler.
• Run as few applications as you can.
• Turn down the screen brightness levels.
• Do not use the iSight camera that is built in.
• Turn off background notifications.
• Turn off spotlight indexing.
• Disable all unwanted features.
• Keep the laptop computer as cool as possible.
• Calibrate the battery on a regular basis.
• Use the private mode browsing in your Safari or Firefox web browser.
• Turn off the auto checking features of email accounts.

These measures of laptop battery care should improve the life of your MacBook Pro battery considerably, but by doing this you are placing several limitations on your machine.

It is with all these settings in place that Apple releases its MacBook Pro battery life reviews, so it is important that we do not get carried away by these claims. In fact, if you check out some well reputed magazines and journals like PC World magazine and Chip magazine, they will tell you exactly the same thing.

The fact that Steve Jobs and Apple Computers are offering such a high degree of battery life is commendable indeed, but we must not read into this too much. For these powerful machines to offer around 5 hours of battery life is a very big deal, and it is a great rise from the battery life of machines that we have been using so far.