[AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note I717] welchertc:
Battery life is purely subjective. No two people will have the same experience.

Have you used an app like CPU spy to make sure the phone is going into deep sleep? Rogue apps keeping the phone in a wake lock can seriously affect battery life, but its hard to say if anybody's apps are doing that, because we all use different apps and there's no list of apps that keep a wake lock, so you need to use something like CPU spy to see if you are going to deep sleep when your screen is off.

Related to apps as well, don't use any task killers or constantly kill apps when you exit them. A lot of people think killing apps is necessary when it completely is not. Android, since donut or eclair, manages its RAM very well, so that when a properly written app (ie. It's not keeping a wake lock) is in RAM, it's just in a frozen state not using any CPU cycles. Constantly killing well written apps hurts battery life, because restarting the app fresh is much more processor intensive than pulling a frozen app out of RAM. Plus you don't have to deal with annoying loading/splash screens.

Also, like others have said, using the lowest brightness possible, and turning off sync for any unnecessary apps will help battery life. GPS doesn't matter so long as you don't keep something running that uses it. If an app isn't using GPS, then GPS isn't using battery. I always leave my GPS on and do not notice a difference compared to turning it off. If you're paranoid about GPS leave it off, but it's annoying to have to turn it on every time you want to use an app that requires it. You can also disable location access in most apps like Facebook, twitter, etc where you don't need GPS really, and that will make leaving it on even better. If you don't use GPS much anyways, leave it off.

Like somebody said, your cell signal can greatly affect your performance, so use WiFi whenever possible, and even put a data toggle in your pulldown so you can disable cell data when you don't really need it. WiFi in general uses less battery than cellular data, so I use it whenever possible.

I've also noticed that how you use your screen on time also has a great effect on battery life. When I have extended lengths of constant screen on time where the phone starts heating up and whatnot, I see much less battery life than if I just use my phone here and there intermittently. Long stretches of screen on time stress the processor and battery heating them up and making them less efficient, where as short stretches allow the processor time to stay at a cooler, more efficient temperature. If you game at all on your phone, you've definitely experienced this, as you know that your phone heats up due to the extended lengths of screen on time and heavy processor usage. Gaming is a no-no if you're striving for better battery life.

With following those guidelines, my Note sees about 3.5 screen on time with JB on Gubment Cheeze. I would get around that on ICS as well, and I don't remember what it was on GB. Fellow testers and teammates for Gubment Cheeze have seen up to 4 hours and a little more even on JB, so it's definitely possible to have decent battery life on JB.

It really comes down to your own personal usage.