Battery life?

Do ibooks and powerbooks really get that much battery life?
Is the given 6hrs or 5hrs when idle, or at full cpu utilisation?

I have both the powerbook and the ibook
The powerbook gets about 2hrs of battery life
And the iBook gets about 4hrs of battery life

http://www.girr.org/random_stuff/pb15_battery_life.html

Wow you've got to be kidding me. The chances of me getting a mac just plummetted.

I get 4.5 - 5 hours on my powerbook without a problem

Wow 5 hours
I dont really care about battery life that much...the only time you really need it is if you travel, then you would need to get a aditional battery.
But I have used my ibook and powerbook on the plane a few times to watch movies and such.
For using it around the house the battery life is fine

I get around 3-3.5 hours on my powerbook. If you aren't using airport or bluetooth, it jumps a lot. If you really need to worry about power consumption, what are the odds you are going to need airport or bluetooth?

I'm perfectly satisfied with my battery life - tears the crap out of my old dell laptop. (got 1.5 hours avg)

yes, if you don't have to use blue tooth or airport, you get much more. While surfing, chating, and working with adobe programs, I get anywhere from 2.5-3.5 hrs of battery life. It helps if you put screen brightness down. If I'm just chating and surfing, I get more like 3.5-4.5. Battery life on apples is actually really good...especially the iBooks. They definenlty compare to pc laptops....and there is a lot more to them.

I use both so maybe thats why I am not getting as much battery life

A lot of it depends on what you use it for and how well you look after the battery.

Follow the instructions here for best results:
http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

Yeah no doubt.. I have three batteries. Two of them get around 2 hours with airport on, with airport of 3-3.5 hours, my 3rd battery with airport on, 20 minutes, with it off, 45 minutes. Yeah that 3rd battery is shot

ok. i got my powerbook sometime late august and no, i didn't do the calibration thingy at first...
but i'm getting lousy 2 hours battery life. however, i always have my airport on (it's kind of the point so you can move around the house and still be connected >_> )
but a lot of people seem to be getting much more.
do you think my battery is faulty? should i just get a new one... ghh.
i don't mind it THAT much but it is annoying to know it could be much better...

There is a way to reset or recalibrate the battery. Here are two documents from the Apple site on batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries
Battery Reset 2.0 Document and Software

I don't think you want to use the second link. I would check you user's manual about calibrating your battery.

Looking back at this post I found this post #9.

Airport drains your battery and quick, so I would say you are getting quite good battery life, many people get 2 hours without airport on, so that's really good. I know I can't get 2 hours with my airport card on. I usually just plugin when I am around the house, I have sockets everywhere with a power cord already hanging out of it so it's easy for me to plugin

alright. makes me feel a bit better.

can you guys also tell me whats the best way to treat your battery?
i already know that at least once a month i should drain my battery. is it bad if it happens more often? also, always charge to full? or is it ok to just charge to say 80%?

i'm hopeless in these things and don't wanna damage my battery unintentionally.

the batteries are pretty "smart", you shouldn't have any problems doing what you mentioned.

btw I get 4-6hrs on my PowerBook

6 hours? bloody ****. that doesn't sound too fair to me... *sobs*

heheh, just depends on how you use your laptop, here is how I use mine...

* I use the least amount of brightness necessary (usually 1 or 2 bars)
* Turn off Airport if I don't need wifi access.
* A lot of people haven't mentioned this, but under Power Settings for Battery Power, I set Processor Performance to Reduced (can barely notice a speed difference)
* Using Cocktail, I set my hardisk spindown time to 2min (so the hard drive is only spining and drawing excess power when required)
* Monthly battery recalibration

yea, tarig is right..... there are SoOoOo many factors to length of the battery, (screen size, screen brightness, bluetooth, airport, applications running, processors running, temperature, ect.) but just using safari (via airport) with the screen on half bright i get 2 hrs, well at least thats what the little calculator says, but once i get to about 12% it suddenly jumpes to 0%; so 2 hrs might more be like 1hr and 40 min