Batter life jumping all over the place; Macbook Pro

I recently bought a 17 inch Macbook Pro, and I don't know what's going on with the battery. In the course of 5 minutes, the batter life icon said it had 6 hours and 30 min left, I left it alone and the screen went dark, then I looked at it a minute later and it said 3:44, left it again, then a minute later it said 4:27 and then jumped to 5:32, and then I just looked about 45 seconds later and it said 2:50 remaining. Why is it doing this and what should I do?

I had this problem too initially, then I calibrated my battery and it settled down (and seemingly improved the reported battery life too).

ditto?

i'm having the exact same problem on my i5 MBP. let me know if you have a resolution.

As mentioned a calibrated battery makes it more accurate. That's pretty much all a calibration does and it doesn't need to be done more than once a month so don't go calibration crazy thinking it will be more accurate the more often you do it. The time remaining becomes less accurate the longer you go without calibrating the battery.

Also the time remaining you see is only an estimate based on what you are current doing with the computer at the time of the estimate. If you suddenly do something more demanding then the battery time will go down and it will go back up once you stop that demanding activity. In your case the drastic jump in times is probably because you haven't calibrated the battery yet.

The times jumping around is normal because you are never using a constant amount of power at any given time but the difference shouldn't be in hours unless you are doing something really demanding. For example when I start playing a game the time goes way down. Just think of the time remaining as an estimate rather than fact and it will fluctuate based on what you are doing.

"calibrated"

you speak as if this "calibration utility" is in the system tools folder or some crap.

I have gone to the Apple store and the only recommendation they had for me was to do a PMU reset. If that is the "calibration" you referred to, it still doesn't help.

I just bought this thing and the battery life hasn't been more than 4 hours. The "diagnostic" information on the battery isn't readily accessible by myself, so if there is any info on how to accurately find if my battery is faulty or if they lied about their 7-8 hour battery life, I would like to know.

Northrnchimp gave a link on how to calibrate the battery but since you didn't see it here is another one: Mac OS X 10.6 Help: Calibrating a portable computer battery

The advertised battery time is usually only achievable if you turn off all unnecessary extra items. For example, the keyboard lights, wireless card, bluetooth, the screen dimmed somewhat, and nothing plugged into the the USB ports.

I normally get about 6 hours of battery life when doing so and only about 4 hours when I have several of the above mentioned items turned on. Keep in mind I have the previous generation MacBook Pro which advertises less battery life than the newer ones.