I have a Mac Book Pro early 2011 version running on a 2.2 quad core i7, before I upgraded to Lion, when I fully charged the battery indicator always display 5+ hours of battery life. However, as soon as I have upgraded to Lion, even I have fully charged my Mac Book Pro, the battery life indicator has never display anything over 4 hours.
I then go to change some energy saving setting, adjust the brightness, etc and finally can squeeze the battery timer up to 4:30. However, I still can see a significant shorten life of the battery.
In summary, in my personal experience of this Lion upgrade (+ some other articles online), I am quite certain that the current Mac OS X Lion (10.7) is using a lot more power than it previous OS (10.6.8). Now I am hoping Apple will release a 10.7.1 to get this power consumption issue fixed.
After my extensive testing on my Mac Book Pro, the battery life is shorten around 1 – 2 hours in normal use.