Centrino Users check in...need some info

[Liviathan]

Looking to get a Dell Centrino....

what is your battery life like?? Performance?? Think the laptop is good for development?

 

[eriqesque]

On my T40 with the smaller battery I get about
4.5hrs on the Large capacity about 7hrs
My performance is very good I upgraded to the 7200rpm HDD
and this thing zooms I have the 1.6 Pentium M

 

[vshah]

my d500 gets ~4 hours with single battery, ~7ish with another in the media bay...
and i got it for ~1100 bucks

-Vivan

 

[Derango]

My 600m ( 1.3ghz p-m, intel wireless, 5400rpm IBM 40GNX hard drive replacing the hitachi 5400rpm drive it came with) can last from 4-5 hours on one charge (depending on how heavy the use is) and around 8-9 with two batteries. These totals are without use of the optical drive and with the screen brightness set all the way down (Also the CPU was locked at 600mhz, the slowest speed that it runs at)

The performance is very, very good, in that I don't even think about it. It would work fine for development, playing games, doing whatever. (and it does )

 

[RonS]

I am a full-time programmer, doing all of my development on a Dell Inspiron 8600. It works out good for me because I travel a lot, and I know that I'll have everything I need with me when I leave.

the battery lasts a LONG time. The power is out right now here in Portland, Oregon (snow storm) and I'm happily working on battery right now. I'd' say it lasts about 6-7 hours. I keep the screen brightness turned down to make the battery last as long as possible.

 

[Frightcrawler]

6-7 hours? do you have the extra battery?

 

[Liviathan]

I'm leaning against the 8600 because its heavier than I would like.

But thanks for the info...it seems if I get the extra battery I will be set...

 

[Frightcrawler]

i would say that the pentium-m/centrino type machines are very good.
you get the power of pentium 4, but the ace that the pentium-m has is battery life.

to answer your original question, the battery life is at least 3 hours and the performance is very good considering the battery life. i dont understand your last question though.

if you want a good centrino machine, but dont need good graphics, get an ibm.
if you want good graphics with centrino, get a machine from vendors such as dell, compaq/hp, and gateway.

 

[GnomeCop]

I have a Voodoo envy M355 and when I'm just doing work, email, internet, etc I get about 4-5hours max.
If I sit down and have a gaming session, it lasts about 3 hours of running things like UT2k3 , SOF2 or SWG.

 

[elanarchist]

Compaq X1000 here (800 AR, w00t!), lasts around 4-5 hours with the screen turned down. The DVD drive kind of saps power though, only lasts three and a half hours or so while watching a DVD movie.