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Laptop battery life question. Mobile Athlon vs Mobile P4

SithSolo1

SithSolo1

Diamond Member
Which one is gonna have the better power management?

Do the mobile athlons use a ton of power?

I'm looking at a P4 2.4 laptop vs a Xp 2500+ mobile athlon
 
Great, now somebody replies after the purchase has been made...

Is the difference enough to warrant taking it back and spenting about $200 more?
 
My wifes Emachines laptop that uses a Barton 2400+ gets over 3.5 hours on it's battery which is much better than the P4 DTR laptops which usually clock in at 1.5-2.5 hours as I've seen. It's got a 15.4" widescreen display too.
 
Originally posted by: knouri
My wifes Emachines laptop that uses a Barton 2400+ gets over 3.5 hours on it's battery which is much better than the P4 DTR laptops which usually clock in at 1.5-2.5 hours as I've seen. It's got a 15.4" widescreen display too.
Click to expand...

Wow..thats seems to be pretty good. I'm thinking of getting the Emachines from BB, but couldn't find specs on battery life. One thing I've noticed is that battery life of Centrinos can differ by up to 3 hours. I've seen Toshibas and IBM clocking 6-7 hours while some compaqs only 3.5HR. I will prolly get the Emachines (seems like a great value) or maybe wait for Celeron M laptops to come out.
 
knouri: is your wife's laptop the M-5312? I got one of those two months ago, and I only get two hours out of the battery.
 
Originally posted by: SithSolo1
Great, now somebody replies after the purchase has been made...

Is the difference enough to warrant taking it back and spenting about $200 more?
Click to expand...



You waited less than an hour ??? 😕
 
Actually it was my friend calling for his dad from BB. They waited 15mins, I just didn't get back here to make a smartarsed comment for an hour. 😉

This is also a dad that just dropped $3k for a DELL w/ 2 GB of ram and then bought a Samsung 213T. So if he wants to throw away his money I'm not gonna stop him.
 
CPU isn't the only thing that determines battery life. You look at fujistu they have those ultra portables that can get like 8-12 hours on a battery charge, while cheap laptops can burn thru a battery in a 1.5-2 using the same proccessors.
 
The thing with Athlon M's is not that they suck up heat (most are circa 30watts) but that they are often in cheap laptops, this more than anything gives them a bad name wrt battery life. Dont forget a cpu's power usage is really not that significant in comparrison to the LCD screen.
 
My friend just got a 1.6 Centrino from IBM and yeah its 7 hours, but that is 7 hours on standby 😉 When he uses it it goes to about 3 hours of battery life which still rocks
 
On its own merits, I'd easily go for a Barton mobile over a P4m. But the AMD's usually come with much crappier hardware, namely chipset and graphics... Makes them look bad...
 
Originally posted by: magomago
My friend just got a 1.6 Centrino from IBM and yeah its 7 hours, but that is 7 hours on standby 😉 When he uses it it goes to about 3 hours of battery life which still rocks
Click to expand...

My Dell i8600 Centrino can get about 7 hours with normal usage.
 
Originally posted by: busmaster11
On its own merits, I'd easily go for a Barton mobile over a P4m. But the AMD's usually come with much crappier hardware, namely chipset and graphics... Makes them look bad...
Click to expand...

Well, HP's come with the ATi IGP 320M chipset, which is pretty decent. They support DDR, they have a Radeon 7000 chipset, etc. It won't be the best at gaming, but for 2D, it suffices.

I remembered looking at a Physics teacher's P-M Centrino laptop (Dell 600M). The estimated battery life was very poor: 1.5 hours when it was at 90% full!
 
My Dell Latitude C600 with a 750Mhz P3 and 512MB SDRAM can get around 4-5 hours with one 66Whr battery. 😀 Wish I had the cash for a second battery...

-Por
 
I guess you have to go by reviews. Since one laptop battery may have a higher capacity than another. Negating the power dissipation one cpu may have over the other.
Anyone know what the dissipation is for the different versions XP-M's. I know the low voltage one's would have the lowest.
 
Originally posted by: Ionizer86
Originally posted by: busmaster11
On its own merits, I'd easily go for a Barton mobile over a P4m. But the AMD's usually come with much crappier hardware, namely chipset and graphics... Makes them look bad...
Click to expand...

Well, HP's come with the ATi IGP 320M chipset, which is pretty decent. They support DDR, they have a Radeon 7000 chipset, etc. It won't be the best at gaming, but for 2D, it suffices.

I remembered looking at a Physics teacher's P-M Centrino laptop (Dell 600M). The estimated battery life was very poor: 1.5 hours when it was at 90% full!
Click to expand...

The 320 igp's graphics core is three years old, and ATI has a newer version out based on the 9200 chip; but its for Intel mobile systems. This only proves my point. It's hard or impossible to find a lappy where a deserving graphics chip is paired with a Barton.

On that Centrino, or any other system, if the last time the power diags polled the battery resources was when the system was playing a DVD or a game or doing something intensive, it will provide an estimate based on how long the resources available will be able to continue the status quo - which it thinks would be what the intensive opperation is... IE if you idle the machine the time may double to 3 hours, etc...

Hope thats the case....
 
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