Comments on: What laptop computer has the longest battery life?

Question: What laptop computer has the longest battery life?

idontlikewords — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 14:11:17 -0800

What specific laptop computer, Mac or PC, has the longest battery life?

I am in the research stage of upgrading from an old Mac laptop, which has about 2 minutes of battery life (and yes, I am aware that I could just get a new battery from batterytech.com, but I think it's time to get a machine with a clock speed faster than 500mHz!). I'm thinking that I will get a PC, as I'm totally comfortable with either platform, and price is unfortunately an issue. It's difficult enough to compare models thanks to the 3000 varieties for Intel & AMD chipsets, but really anything that is faster than my current rig will be fine. I'm not interested in playing Quake 4 on this thing, I'm just sick of waiting 30 seconds to load apps.

So tell me, laptop users, what is the best I can hope for with these modern power-guzzlers? 2 hours? 4 hours? Are AMD's better than P4's or vice-versa? Is there some awesome power management software that I should be aware of? What brand makes the best batteries? Anything else I should consider?

By: b1tr0t

b1tr0t — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 14:23:15 -0800

Apple iBooks were generally much better than Powerbooks (which were still good), but the MacBrook Pro should also be very good.

On the PC side, Intel's Centrino package (chipset + pentium-M cpu + wifi) dominates. A moderately fast Centrino based notebook should give you 3 hours of actual use with the standard battery. AMD is great on the desktop, but should be avoided in notebooks.

By: cribcage

cribcage — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 14:24:17 -0800

I used to* get about 4–5 hours on my 12" 867 MHz PowerBook, without running any intensive software — mostly word processing. Obviously if I'd been playing CDs constantly through the speakers...

* Now, my battery's shot like yours.

By: zerolives

zerolives — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 14:26:28 -0800

My year old powerbook gets 4 hours or so in OS X, 5 hours if I'm in Ubuntu Linux. My brothers iBook does better. I likes that.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 14:44:55 -0800

There are some specialy designed laptops for long-ass battery life, or at least there were when transmeta was selling their ultralow power chipsets. here is a list of laptops (found by googling for 'long battery life laptops') that are supposed to last more then 5 hours on a single charge.

By: jne1813

jne1813 — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 15:53:12 -0800

My Dell Inspiron 6000 with an upgraded 9 cell battery gets me about 5-6 hours. The price is pretty decent and you can upgrade on Dell's website. Often, there will be coupon codes on the net. I upgraded mine due to a code that chopped 700-800 dollars off of something like $1499 and up. So, I was able to get some extras.

By: reverendX

reverendX — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 16:16:02 -0800

I think IBM just launched a new laptop with a 12-hour battery life.

By: reverendX

reverendX — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 16:16:13 -0800

Lenovo, rather.

By: Orb2069

Orb2069 — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 17:45:25 -0800

Side-point - If you're open to experimenting with OS/Hardware solutions, A Laptop HD-to-CF adapter along with an OS that will run from memory like Damn Small Linux might get you a lighter-than and Longer-than standard laptop.

By: Mossy

Mossy — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 04:45:38 -0800

http://www.kemplar.com/panasonic_t4.php

Lifebooks can get 10 hours plus.

By: ikkyu2

ikkyu2 — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 14:50:23 -0800

Unlike the last four or five editions of the Powerbook G4, Apple has not published any statistics on the battery life of the upcoming MacBook, preferring to point out that it has a 60 watt-hour battery in place of the previous Powerbook's 50 watt-hour battery.

We're all waiting to see what the real-life battery life of the MacBook is going to be. My hunch is that it's not going to be doing any 4 hour wifi/HD marathons; if it were, it'd be trumpeted from the rooftops, I'd think.