Over at Rimarkable, there is an entry about GTalk and who is using it. I responded and asked about if it drains the battery. No one responded so I will ask all of you.

When I had a 7100T It definitely drained my batter where as BB messenger didnt. I havent really kept it on with my Pearl because i don't want my battery to die. Anyone know the answe?

Here is the link to the Rimarkable article.

Do You Use Google Talk For BlackBerry | RIMarkable | The official, unofficial BlackBerry Weblog

In my experience I have had the GTalk running for extended periods talking and not talking and don't notice any battery drain.

My exprerience has been just like DNoble. I don't find it draining my battery any more then when I didnt' install it. Even with 7100T i always got atleast 3 days of battery - same with Pearl. If you condition your battery when you first get your unit, battery does keeps its charge well.

You can find how many time Gtalk connects to network by looking at the logs

Alt LGLG to get to logs.

I'm not trying to be smart, but why don't you leave it on to see if it does drain the battery? I just downloaded it, so I'll report back in a few days.

of course it does. WHY wouldn't it.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8100/4.2.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/122)

I use gtalk with the msn transports. I find if it sits in the background battery drain isn't so noticable however if I'm continuously chatting for sustained periods the juice goes down pretty fast. Having said that the battery will easily last a day

pretty much drains like every app: if you use it!