Laptop battery time rant

[Magicthyse]

What the effing heck do the manufacturers base battery times on? Screen off, no hard disk activity, noone typing at the keyboard?

None of my laptops go anywhere near the quoted time. My latest desktop replacement quotes a battery time of up to 2.5 hours. What do I get with what I consider normal use? I actually timed it until it turned itself off - 1 hour and 15 minutes. That is absolutely ridiculous.

Or is it that I'm doing something wrong? Perhaps I'm not turning on some power saving features?

 

[911paramedic]

Mine lasts all of about 12 minutes. I agree with you 100%

 

[CStroman]

My laptop's batteries don't work at all.

 

[MajesticMoose]

not sure of actual time, but i once installed mandrake 1.75 times in a row on battery power.

 

[Koing]

yeah I would agree with you guys.

They base it on all power features and everything on low. So basically you are only *typing* on it and not doing much else with it, and also having the brightness turned all the way down. Alright for me as I like my brightness all the way down anyway

My laptop gives a very good time its quoted as 3.5hrs usage time. R600 (R505 for you usa guys) and when I am only typing on it it does last about 3hrs.

 

[sohcrates]

i get maybe a hour and and a half outta my current one.

just long enough to make me happy, but i *wish* it was longer

 

[THELAIR]

you know, i wouldnt be upset if there was like a 1 year gap in CPU development and instead they put their energy to developing longer lasting batteries.

I want a battery for my laptop that will last at least 6 hours, with everything turned on and mulitple USB/ 5volt PCMCIA adapters plugged in.

Then I'd be happy.

 

[vegetation]

What I notice is that any PCMCIA cards plugged in will drain the batteries down a lot sooner, so take them out if you aren't using them. I wish there was a way to power off the hard drive but win2k seems to thrash the drive so often that it can't be done , even if I'm using just one application without doing anything other than typing.

 

[Keego]

IBM has a great power management thing for their hdd's, but I forget where I got it.

My inspiron 8100 lasts about 1.6 hours on battery with a pcmcia wireless card, not that good by faar.

 

[hans007]

i use my laptop with a wireless nic always plugged in. seems to last about 2.5 hours. which is about its stated run time. now if i read CDs or the hard drive it lasts way less. like say i needed to copy files the entire time, then it would probabl ylast like 1.5 hours.

 

[freeway]

My IBM Thinkpad 560 will last 2 1/2 to 3 hours on a charge. I have two batteries, so I can go up to 6 hours. Of course it is a Pentium 133, and I have all the cards pulled out of it. Brightness is set to medium and I just use it for typing. The worst thing is that the batteries cost $200 each, but I got the laptop and both batteries free back in the good days when you could still get stuff for free off the web.

 

[ThaGrandCow]

<------------ Owns a Gateway Solo 3450 and the higher energy output battery

<------------ Gets about 5.5-6 hours with a wireless nic when the cd-rom/floppy drive slice docking bay is removed

 

[andrey]

My battery lasts about 3~3.5 hours. I was thinking that's low, but looking at everyone else's responses, I think that's pretty darn good

 

[IGBT]

How bout the replacement cost of them ucking things. $130.00 for my old Cannon Inova Book. To much..way to much. And it lasts about 15-20 min.max. But I can't run the lappy without the battery.

 

[dirtboy]

Always buy a laptop with a Lithium Ion battery. They last the longest, twice as long as a NiCad.

 

[ultimatebob]

<< you know, i wouldnt be upset if there was like a 1 year gap in CPU development and instead they put their energy to developing longer lasting batteries.

I want a battery for my laptop that will last at least 6 hours, with everything turned on and mulitple USB/ 5volt PCMCIA adapters plugged in.

Then I'd be happy. >>



The sad thing is that laptop CPU's are ALREADY far behind in both speed and features. Right now, the best CPU that you can get is a 1.2Ghz PIII-M. Meanwhile, you can get an overclockable 2.2Ghz Pentium 4 for a Desktop computers, and you could have gotten 1.5Ghz Pentium 4 a year ago! Why are the #$^* mobile Pentium 4's not available over 15 months after the desktop Pentium 4's release?!? As a mobile power user, it's irritating to say the least.

 

[hans007]

because any CPU over 500mhz is good enough for 90% of people. that and the pentium 4 uses like 80 watts of heat. Without AMD intel could have taken their time and released lower power CPUs, and not pushed their production processes, but competition forced them to release things on not the ideal fab process.

 

[CKDragon]

I've noticed this in my recent search for a laptop. Before I started looking around, I was under the impression that most laptops lasted 8+ hours. Anything under 3 hours just sounds absolutely insane... it takes away from the whole 'portable' idea... so frustrating.

CK

 

[Cyco]

Yeah, laptop batteries suck, and so does the amount of time they're supposed to last. My Dell Inspiron 4000 battery is supposed to last 4+ hours, but in reality, it lasts anywhere from 1 1/2 to 3, depending on what I'm doing. That's without any PCMCIA cards by the way.
-Cyco-

 

[ultimatebob]

<< because any CPU over 500mhz is good enough for 90% of people. that and the pentium 4 uses like 80 watts of heat. Without AMD intel could have taken their time and released lower power CPUs, and not pushed their production processes, but competition forced them to release things on not the ideal fab process. >>



Nah, they were just waiting for me to start bitching before they finally released it

http://www.intel.com/home/mobile/pentium4-m/tech_info.htm

Nice timing, Intel!