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General discussion

What notebook has the best battery life?

Jan 2, 2005 4:06AM PST

What under-$1000 notebook gives the best battery life for a single battery? Under $2000? What about with two batteries? Any in either catergory that are close but cost a lot less? Any good links to a product test that goes into this question in detail?

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Discussion is locked

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Loaded question.
Jan 2, 2005 4:34AM PST

All makers will decrease the size of the battery if they go over 4 hours. Here's why. To lower the production cost.

On top of that I can tilt the results by placing one unit it a chilled room and another in a hot room. Let's not mention that simple dimming of the screen could add an hour.

Then the winner today will not be the winner in one year since the battey ages.

This will be a poor point to pick a laptop on.

Bob

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So, then. . .
Jan 2, 2005 5:19AM PST

You're saying that four hours is all I should expect because that's the way they intend it, and all the good ones will last about that long? Cool. That's information I didn't have before. Although it does seem strange to me that there's no competition for longest battery life. I thought there would be.

You know of no exceptions to this rule?

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Here's the exceptions.
Jan 2, 2005 5:32AM PST

1. HP, Dell, others let you upsize the battery. GREAT THING TO DO!!!

2. You select a Centrino. Today, it's where the hours are.

3. You don't dicker too much with the defaults for the power settings. I tend to reduce the minutes to the screen off from 10 to 2 or 3 minutes. This can really save power.

4. Don't skimp on or overdo RAM. Pick the sweet spot for today's XP which is... 512 MB.

5. If hours are important... You get the shared video RAM based laptop.

Remember this is not the best way to choose your laptop or tell everyone this is how, but the above 5 items could get you in the 6 hour class.

Bob

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Trade-offs on 1 and 5 . . .
Jan 2, 2005 6:16AM PST

What bob said is absolutely right. And as he said it's not a great idea to buy a laptop based solely on battery life because in the suggestions above you have trade offs, particularly on #1 and #5:

1. If you upsize the battery, you always upsize the weight and sometimes even the size of the computer.

2. Shared video ram is a huge performance hit if you play 3d games or do video editing.

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But if I don't care about weight and video games. . .
Jan 2, 2005 9:21AM PST

. . .but maybe I do care about overall quality and reliability, you're saying that if I go with, say, a Dell, get 512MB of RAM, go with shared video, and order a bigger battery if available, I'll be about where I want to be?

What about the other popular brands? Sony? Compaq? Is there any (good) brand that has a particularly inexpensive (or less-than-outrageously expensive) battery?

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The HP custom order units ..
Jan 2, 2005 9:31AM PST

Noted by Ken many times is worth looking at.

Bob

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Then it's time to balance other features
Jan 2, 2005 11:10AM PST

If you want integrated RAM and a large battery, I know the HP DV1000 has both, and a long life. The Compaq X1000/HP zt3000 is another reliable machine (which ken has mentioned many times) from HP/Compaq, but it has dedicated RAM. Both those systems offer upgradeable batteries.

Dell has the 700m, which is thin, light, has a smaller screen, upgradeable battery and integrated graphics, but from the Cnet review, it seems it's battery life doesn't quite live up to expectations. And the 12" screen may make you nuts. It's battery is upgradeable though.

The Dell 8600 which I have, which lasts 4 hours easily under normal usage with power settings skewed more towards power (less battery life), doesn't offer integrated video.

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batterylife
Jan 22, 2005 1:34AM PST

I've been looking into this myself and found this thread by searching for "Best battery life" on Google.As stated above, you probably don't want to buy your laptop based on batterylife alone. From what I've seen Pentium M cpus will give you the best batterylife, P4s & Celeron Ms the worst and AMDs falling somewhere in between-and this isn't always true. If you go to Newegg (just as an example) check out the Acer laptops. The battery life is listed on most of them as Pentium M-5 hrs, P4 1.5 hrs, Celeron M-2 hrs, AMDs 2.5-3 hrs. -the only real difference between the Acers is the cpus and the graphics-the LCDs on most of them are 15". I've seen Sony VAIOs with a promoted battery life of 10 hrs.This was a laptop with a Pentium M cpu and a 10 or 12" screen.It takes less juice to drive a smaller screen too. Some brands (Dell and Sony come to mind) have models that will allow you to run 2 batteries for an even more extended run time. I think the MOST important thing to remember about batterylife is this type of battery,like cellphone and camcorder batteries, have memory. If you consistently recharge your battery at 40% discharge that will be its' batterylife. You should completely drain your battery atleast once or twice a month for optimal batterylife. Do this from the time it's new and you'll maintain max batterylife for whatever you have.

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Newegg Battery Life estimates not based on testing
Jan 22, 2005 2:23AM PST

I would be careful relying on Newegg.com's battery life estimates. They're based (loosely) on manufacturer's information. I love newegg but for something intangible like battery life, you shoudln't trust them.

One great thing about newegg is that they do have the ultra-low-voltage Athlon 64 on that Acer Ferrari 3200. If I had 2000 bucks to blow.

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2 6 cells for price of 1 or 12 cell battery available on HP
Jan 22, 2005 8:55AM PST

The HPDV1000 Pentium M now has either 2 6 cell batteries for the price of one or it has a 12 cell battery option.

Of course the 1 12 cell will weigh more but if constant battery power life is the priority this is hard to beat.

Or, by getting the 2 6 cells for the price of one (only charged for first one) you only have to shut down the notebook once and get about the same battery life as the 12 cell with less weight (at least on the notebook itself)