Submitted by Kroc and I already touched this subject during yesterday’s podcast, referring to AnandTech’s test of the new MacBook Pro’s battery. This one will deliver 8 hours of battery life, and consequently AnandTech is pretty impressed with this thing. “Today I am more than comfortable saying that this is the best Apple notebook I’ve ever laid my hands on. The build quality is excellent, the base specs are solid and of course, the battery life. There’s no doubt that it could be better; toss in an SSD or drop the price even further, but as it stands the new MBP is an excellent choice if you’re looking for a Mac laptop. Obviously, you can attain the same battery life with a cheaper notebook and one or two spare batteries. But there’s something to be said for increasing battery life by at least 50% without increasing the bulk or weight of the system. I’m not sure there’s much else I can add other than Good Job, Apple.”
I have yet to test this on the road but certainly for me 7+ hours of battery support was a big pull in moving to a Mac for business use. I have a 13″ MBP, i.e., without the dedicated graphics: I think Apple were wise to fill this gap in the MBP line-up; I tried the 15″ and it was frankly too big to lug around after my Vaio (although I marvel at the brutes who seem to manage it with ease), and got too hot and noisy if ever I switched to the separate graphics grunt. But the smaller MBP does both for the road and as a desktop replacement, for me.
I think I am in love (but don’t take me too seriously 🙂
On the luggability front, the battery life is enough to leave the charger behind on some day trips. (He says, having just realised I left my charger at home by accident today – and was fine.)
The only downside to the integrated battery with extended life, is: “What the heck do I do when there is a liquid spill on the keyboard?” (On other laptops my first act would be to remove the battery).
Worse case scenario you could always purchase an external battery from HyperMac:
http://www.hyperdrive.com/HyperMac-MacBook-External-Power-s/91.htm
If you grabbed the highest capacity battery you could have up to 20 hours of battery power
Kaiwai,
Thanks for the tip – that looks like a seriously useful piece of kit. 🙂
I was going to purchase one until I saw that for pretty much the same price I could probably get a low powered netbook for my travels
purchasing stuff from America is incredibly expensive, and in some cases the shipping is hugely expensive 
isn’t it intel et al who supplies apple with hardware? or is it the magic “brick” design that saves the battery?
It’s a custom battery made for Apple. Probably the most controversial decision was to integrate the battery into the MBP. Hopefully replacement of the battery won’t be outrageously expensive.
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/battery/