Battery Experience: AirPort/WaveLAN on 2400c

For nearly two weeks I've been using my PowerBook 2400c with a Lucent WaveLAN Turbo Silver card connected via an Apple AirPort Base Station to my network and the internet. It is great to be able to work about the house without any wires except the AC power adapter and cord. Unfortunately, battery time is reduced significantly as one might expect. Several times I've measured my 2400c's battery time running Mac OS 8.1, 8.5, 8.6 and 9.0 on cross country flights. On full conservation (except for using a RAM disk) and doing word processing and email the battery has routinely lasted over 2 hours and 12 minutes with 8.6 and 9.0. Using the WaveLAN, the best the battery has attained is 1 hour and 37 minutes doing similar types of work. This is about the same time that the battery yielded under Mac OS 8.5 and earlier. I've also noticed that battery utilities seem to always under estimate the amount of time available.