Firefox 4 forces MacBook Pro to use high-power graphics card
The current and previous-gen MacBook Pros have two graphics cards: one low-power integrated chip, and one high-power discrete one. Switching between the two is dynamic, based on program need.
Firefox 3.x would run with the low-power chip, extending battery life greatly. Firefox 4 currently forces the high-power card to run -- both the Firefox binary itself, and the plugin container make this so. You can see this using the gfxCardStatus application.
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Partial resolution here. When hardware acceleration is disabled in F4, it won't switch to the high-power GPU at start up; however, there are still times that the browser will still switch to the discrete GPU when using certain websites:
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2011/03/26/how-to-disable-gpu-hardware-acceleration-in-firefox-4/
I have given up using firefox because of this issue. Can't afford the battery drain.
@Tripper: Note that a browser like Chrome has the exact same behavior.
I referred to gfxCardStatus in my initial post. This free program also lets you mandate which graphics card the laptop uses, so you can switch back and forth manually, instead of dynamically. I use this all the time to extend my battery life when programs would otherwise needlessly use the high-power card. These programs include the Microsoft AutoUpdate program and a surprising number of other regular tools. So, when I care, I use gfxCardStatus to switch back and forth.
Just remember that some programs, like Aperture, really do need the high-power card, and so will not behave correctly if you start the up while using the integrated card.