upgrade or save up for a new one

[T2urtle]

I have a Samsung 11 inch laptop. Pretty much its a early i3.


Specs here

http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/pcs/NP300U1A-A01US-specs

Mainly used for school, general surfing and a lot of downloading and watching of video content. No cable TV so all i do is download my TV shows and then watch them later, I will use the streaming options once in a while but i prefer to download option because i dont like to be dependent on wifi.

My many issue with the laptop is battery life and screen resolution, 13xx by 7xx. I know nothing i can do the address the screen resolution and i'm willing to still live with this. But i know i can address the battery life. Currently i have a 4000mah battery that gets me 2-2.5hour of battery life.

ebay has a battery that claims its 6600mah for $30 from a USA sellerCLICKY

They also have a 7800mah from a china seller for $40 CLICKY

Now these are not OEM obviously for the price and i dont expect them to be exactly the size quoted, this should give me SOME extra battery life. Plus i can always hot swap. I was also told laptops gain more battery life with the install of a SSD. Seems most 200-350GB HD are running for under $150. Anyone know what the ballpark battery life one can expect from going HDD to SDD?



Summary...
Should i upgrade to a SSD and get a bigger battery pack. Total cost should be $200. Or should i just save up money for a new laptop, something with least 1600x w/e resolution and 5+ hour battery life.

 

[ninaholic37]

I would demo some 1600x laptops for a while before you buy them. You might not like it's squashed/tiny look and zooming everything can lead to cruddier blobs.

 

[T2urtle]

thanks for that, i could always jump to a higher resolution.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Anyone know what the ballpark battery life one can expect from going HDD to SDD?

I'm using an Acer Aspire V5-131 with Win7. It came with a six-cell battery, and 500GB HDD. I was getting 6.5hrs of battery life web browsing with wifi enabled. After I swapped the HDD for an 80GB X25-M G2 Intel SSD, my battery life went up to nearly 8hrs.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

There's no guarantee that an SSD will increase your battery life. (2.5" HDDs and SSDs have a lot of overlap in power use - all working in the 0.3-3w ballpark. You can easily a given HDD that uses less power than a given SSD and visa versa.)

A bigger battery wouldn't hurt anything. An SSD will make your laptop a lot better in terms of usability though, so I'd suggest upgrading it for that reason.

 

[T2urtle]

Anyone have experience with these unknown Chinese batteries? Are they normally the size that they claim? I'm debating between the two, leaning towards the smaller, USA seller one. I'm at 2-2.5 hours on a 4000mah, would love to hit 3-3.5 with a 6600mah. I have two classes back to back so that's 3 hours with no outlet.

I'll probably hold off on the SSD upgrading, since most people reported only a 10% gain if that. I don't need the speed currently and can save for the next laptop.

 

[corkyg]

I would save for a new one. Upgrading notebooks is very limited in worthwhile results - with the exception of replacing a HDD with SSD.

 

[JWade]

I have had good luck with replacement batteries off ebay. they have generally been close to what they say in mah. I would vote for the bigger battery and a ssd, maybe not 240gb in size, get a 120 and save some money, use your current hard drive in an external enclosure for more space and backing up files. just my opinion