What laptop has the best battery life?

[Aimster]

Can ya beat it?

 

[cheesehead]

Yep. I'm building a laptop into an ammo cannister (surplus, of course), and adding a sealed lead-acid battery for power. (It's using a standard desktop HDD through an adapter.)
With a 60 amp-hour RV battery, I should get at least 12-14 hours.


That, and I'm working on a solar powered PalmPilot. Battery life would be theoretically infinite, so long as I leave it in the sun.

 

[AmigaMan]

Originally posted by: Cheesehead
Yep. I'm building a laptop into an ammo cannister (surplus, of course), and adding a sealed lead-acid battery for power. (It's using a standard desktop HDD through an adapter.)
With a 60 amp-hour RV battery, I should get at least 12-14 hours.

Nice! While not real portable, you get major coolness and geekiness points. I take it you're recharging the battery via the RV? Have you thought about getting a solar panel to trickle charge the battery? I saw something on Gizmodo about a wireless router hooked up to a deep cycle battery and solar panel. It was like a way to get wireless internet for poor countries.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Lenovo Thinkpad X60s - dual core, 3.46lbs, 12" LCD, 8-9 hours battery life on single battery, additional battery available

http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.php?id=127

 

[electrosoccertux]

Originally posted by: Cheesehead
Yep. I'm building a laptop into an ammo cannister (surplus, of course), and adding a sealed lead-acid battery for power. (It's using a standard desktop HDD through an adapter.)
With a 60 amp-hour RV battery, I should get at least 12-14 hours.


That, and I'm working on a solar powered PalmPilot. Battery life would be theoretically infinite, so long as I leave it in the sun.

This, my friend, calls for a high-five.

 

[Ionizer86]

I wonder how a Thinkpad T with both the nine cell and the Ultrabay battery would do 😛 My T60 with just the 6 cell gets close to 5 hours, so figure 50% more for 9 cell then another 2+ hours for the ultrabay, I'm guessing.

 

[electrosoccertux]

I didn't want a Thinkpad because their screens suck IMO. Not very bright. But that could just be me.

 

[porcorosso]

Used to own a Toshiba Libretto. It would run for 10-12 hours of heavy use (network connection, hard drive thrashing, heavy graphics use -- well, as heavy as an 8MB ATI subsystem would support) on its extended use battery.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: electrosoccertux
I didn't want a Thinkpad because their screens suck IMO. Not very bright. But that could just be me.

Depends what you get. The 14" on the T-series isn't great, but bright enough on the later models. The 15" SXGA+/UXGA are some of the best LCD panels you will ever find. The 15.4" WSXGA+ is amazing as well. The 14" WXGA is good enough. The 12" XGA is good enough. Can't speak for the other screens, but overall they get the job done.

Originally posted by: Ionizer86
I wonder how a Thinkpad T with both the nine cell and the Ultrabay battery would do 😛 My T60 with just the 6 cell gets close to 5 hours, so figure 50% more for 9 cell then another 2+ hours for the ultrabay, I'm guessing.

Wonder no more! The 15" SXGA+ T60 got 5:43 on the MobileMark Office Productivity test. The 9-cell has an 85WHr capacity. Now I last heard Lenovo was releasing a new, improved Ultrabay battery that should increase capacity, but it isn't on their site yet. If you customize a T60 for order and add the "Ultrabay Advanced Battery," you get part # W9SPUSP, but that isn't found on Lenovo's search function. So while the new one may have higher capacity, we'll go with the old for now. The old Ultrabay had 24WHr of additional capacity. Figuring this adds about 28% to the total battery capacity, it will add about 28% to the battery life giving a 7:20 runtime, approximately. If you look at my T43 review where I tested the 6-cell, 9-cell, and Ultrabay, this approximation holds true.

T60 review:
http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.php?id=112&part=glance

T43 review:
http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.php?id=74&part=glance