is it just me or does the battery life for laptops suck?

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EnderW

[H]F Junkie
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I recently started looking into getting a laptop and battery life was something I was very interested in.
To my disbelief, it seems even a tiny one such as a 700m would be doing good to get 5 hours on a single charge.
That's ridiculous IMO, I mean I thought my iPod sucks and it gets like 10 hours.
When is battery technology going to catch up? Is there anything promising in the future?
 
Hey, if you don't like it, then just find a better way to store electrons. Once you have figured this out, you can patent your idea and become very wealthy.
 
yeah, as far as portable electronics goes, batteries are what's holding everything back.

hmm, sorry for the useless reply :( , i dont have any answer for your questions...
 
Consider everything that's running off that battery though. An entire system on some power cells while trying to maintain low heat in such a small case?. The LCD alone, plus optical drives, external peripherals, hard drive, etc... It's easy to explain where the power goes.

BTW, keeping power up on your lappy isn't really as bad as it seems. Plug it in while you're at your desk and plug it in when you go to bed at night. Not really too bad in real life situations. THe only part I find annoying is rolling up the power cable to go somewhere... :rolleyes:
 
mindstormsguy said:
yeah, as far as portable electronics goes, batteries are what's holding everything back.

hmm, sorry for the useless reply :( , i dont have any answer for your questions...
Click to expand...
Hmmm, see the thing is...in Japan, laptops regularly get 5+ hour lifes. For example: http://www.dynamism.com/r4/specs.shtml

Personally i think its 3 factors: Our Market, Currect Tech, and Battery Tech

Our market wants more features, We want our laptops to be able to do everythig and we cant be happy with small laptops with less features (Well most of us)

Current tech for the above features requires lots of power.

current batterys cant supply that power.
 
Rombus said:
Our market wants more features, We want our laptops to be able to do everythig and we cant be happy with small laptops with less features (Well most of us)
Click to expand...
Yep, battery life is a trade-off of features and size. In that example link, not many people would be happy with a 10.8" LCD or a 1.2GHz P-M (a ULV chip). But the battery life is great. ;)

EnderW: find a laptop with a battery capacity to power usage ratio like the iPod (4.9WHr/0.5W = ~10 hours) and you'll get similar battery life. The 700m would need around a 124WHr battery to get 10 hours of battery life. It should be very obvious that a laptop uses much more power than an MP3 player (25x as much, 700m vs iPod). Considering that the 700m 8 cell battery rated at only about 1/2 that capacity already sticks out of the laptop, it would be kind of ridiculous to make a 16 cell battery (or a 14 cell Li-Poly battery if price were no object). If you have something better than Li-Ion that can be manufactured as cheaply, you'll be rich. :p
 
If you think you have it bad, my Sager 9860 (P4 3.2GHz Prescott 640, Go 6800, 17" widescreen LCD, same thing as Alienware 7700m) gets about 90 minutes.
 
Well, if you have an extra $350 and some sun laptop battery recharger:

http://www.freshtracksmaps.com/batteries-nimh.htm

Or, for a more economical solution, just get a small marine boat battery and carry it around with you in a soda can cooler. It could fit in the seat in front of you on the plane and you can charge it up in the airport. Just get an automobile 12V DC-to-DC converter to connect to your laptop.

:rolleyes:
 
Actually there are some good laptops that come to mind. I know that many of the business class laptops all get around 5 hours or so, and I've seen some go up to 9 hours with an extra modular batter. My friend has a top of the line gateway MX680XL or something, and even with a 17" screen at an X700, it still gets 5 hours too. However, my Dell 9300 is horrible. It gets about 3:30-4hrs on the desktop, but if I turn the screen up to full brightness and game, I get about 75min :p
 
my laptop is only getting an hour and a half lately :(

i guess thats what comes with 4 years of use though...
 
I have an IBM Thinkpad T42 and right now without alots of tweaking yet, only basic ACPI support in linux are working right now but i'm pushing about 5-6 hours already, and I suspect when i finish up tweaking all the power management i'll be doing around 6+ hours on a single battery which isn't too bad consdering its size (14.4) and all of the features it has on it.

And haha, that jap laptop is almost perfect for me, i'm happy with laptop with minimal features set so i would be happy with that one :) The thinkpad that i have is pretty minimalist in alots of way.
 
There are plenty of laptops that are reliable for 5 hours of use with the larger battery option. Most Dells get at least that, IBMs meet or exceed that, and I'm sure other manufacturers have options that are similar. It's really not bad considering all that you can do with the thing. Like has been said, the screen is the biggest draw on the battery, so get a 10" or below laptop if you want something that will last a good long time. Mine gets around 9 hours with the the larger battery, still at 2.5 pounds.
 
Morale of the story is, know how many cells your battery has because I'm most people dont have the "extended battery" (9+ cell).
 
My new Dell Inspirion 6000(w/ 1.86GHz Pentium M) can get about 6 hours off a charge. I do have the upgraded 9 cell(I think) battery on it.

I have the laptop currently plugged into my kill-a-watt meter, and it pulls 32watts while running f@h full tilt with the screen closed, and only 10 more watts with the screen open. It pulls about 65watts when chanrging the battery and running f@h. Compare ~50 watts(under full stress) to what an ipod will pull(as someone stated ealier in thread, half a watt), and it's easy to see why battery times are 'low.' They seem great to me though compared to the pitiful life I got on my old Pentium 133 laptop back in the day.
 
I have a 4 year old Dell latitude that i just bought a new battery for and it gets about 4 to 5 hours on a charge... and it has a 17" display and an add on wireless card... when i first got it i had the long life battery and it only got 2 hours on it.... so dont say battery technology hasnt come a long way in the last 5 years... there is still a long way to go.... one day maybe a hydrogen powered laptop? :cool:
edit: or in soviet russia a nuclear one?
 
Too bad batteries could be manufactured to be more efficient, BUT where would the money be in that. If every battery you bought lasted 4 times as long, you'd buy 1/4 the batteries you do now.
 
Like everyone else has said...it's just you. You either have a Laptop that gets a VERY respectable 5 hour battery life that weighs under 8 pounds OR you have a Laptop that'll run 12 and weighs 25 pounds (most of which is battery weight) The reason portable devices last longer on battery is that they don't have nearly the CPU and graphics power of a Laptop nor do any of those devices have long range radio transceivers (Wi-Fi does use juice). Hell, Cell phones don't get much better than about 6 hours talk time. My Motorola i730 isn't the thinnest girl at the ball and it has to be charged every day. (has a pretty good sized battery too)
 
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