Need a decent lap w/ long battery life

[VietDude]

Does anyone have any recommendation for a laptop with a long battery life? Looking for one to take to school for about 8 hours of class and I need one to last for the most part. Specs doesn't have to be top performance but also has to be up to par. Thanks

 

[jeffbui]

IBM T series with 14.1 screen, 6 cell battery, and an additional 9 cell battery.

 

[jeffbui]

What's your budget?

 

[fbrdphreak]

Can you plug in anywhere inbetween? See my sig for my lappie. With lowest brightness and wireless, I usually get 4-4.5 hours with the 6-cell batt. If you don't use wireless, you'll easily break 5 hours. If you can afford it, go IBM. Check out your school's bookstore, as they might have IBM lappies. If not, contact IBM directly and they can get you an educational price quote.

 

[spunkz]

i dont know any decent-performing laptops that go for 8+ hours. my averatec 5110p also gets 4-4.5 with regular wireless internet use, and it was <$1000. might want to try a pda?

 

[jvarszegi]

The Fujitsu Lifebook S6220 is a pretty sweet machine. It can get 8.5 hours of battery life with the modular-bay battery, which of course will cost you a little extra. The S6220 has the Dothan 735 (1.7Ghz), which is the biggest difference between it and the S6210, which you can still buy with Banias processors if you're looking to save a little money.

Lots of people like the S7000 series, but I wouldn't pick it because unlike the S6000 series, it doesn't have a CrystalView screen (it's just a brand name for Fujitsu's best TFT screen). Both the S7000 and S6000 series come in XGA resolution; the S6000 series is a little smaller, at a 13.3" resolution, which works great at that size. A friend has one, and it's a beautiful machine. I'm recommending it because it's got great performance (with the only drawback being integrated graphics), it's light-weight at well under 4 pounds with a single battery, it's stylish, and it's the perfect size for a student. Get yourself something like that with a notebook sleeve, and you can tuck it in your bookbag with no problems, or tote it under your arm without the power adapter all day.

If you do go with a Fujitsu, I'd check out portableone.com; they're Fujitsu resellers that also provide support in the States. Their prices on RAM and other upgrades are reasonable, and you can also order the machine from them with better hard drives-- I think they've got the 7K60 and 5K80 available at time of order, something not offered on Fujitsu's website.

 

[fbrdphreak]

If you with with the T42 and get the 9-cell batt, you'll come close to 8 hours.

 

[VietDude]

These are some good advices, I'll have to look into them, thanks

 

[Corporate Thug]

dv1000 w/ 12cell?

 

[IntelUser2000]

Good battery life with Gaming laptops. That's irony. You can't simply have that. This is the reason why for Gamers they should not based the battery life by the processor. Sure it affects a little but not much and I'll tell you why.

The high-end graphics boards like mobility Radeon 9800 and 9700 simply consume too much power when running at full speed. They do clock down when not needed, but at games you just have to run at full speed. You just can't avoid it. The battery life would be equal to putting say, a Pentium 4 2.8C with whatever the CPU you have. So you'll likely have less battery life than if you have a dual processor laptop!!! Only way to alleviate the problem of battery life in gaming is just to get higher capacity battery and/or buy another battery. This is why integrated graphics that perform well will be a virtue to people who play games on laptops.

 

[IntelUser2000]

If you are talking other than gaming, yeah what the guys here are recommending are right. Gaming, NO.

 

[IntelUser2000]

What I mean is to get better battery life in gaming just buy a bigger capacity battery or extra one.