Laptops with the Longest Battery Life?

Yi Ding asks: "Recently, I have been investigating laptops for clients, and the majority of the complaints about current laptops is battery life. Most laptops just don't have enough juice to even finish a single DVD or write an article for 4-5 hours in an internet cafe. Of course, one can lug around extra battery packs, but it's a pain and often defeats the purpose of having a laptop in the first place, portability. What have your experiences with battery life been and where can I find the longest lasting, reasonably robust, laptop?"

Comments

Trade off

[erick99]

Until a more advanced battery technology comes along , battery life is going to be a trade between how long you want the computer to run between recharging and how many features (DVD, etc) you want available. Eventually, some new technology such as fuel cell will enable us to have our cake (lotsa features) and eat it too (very long battery life).

Cheers!

Erick

Really? Portability hampered by a battery?

[switcha]

Of course, one can lug around extra battery packs, but it's a pain and often defeats the purpose of having a laptop in the first place, portability.

Oh, come off it. The handful of ounces a battery weighs pales in comparison to most of the other accouterments a mobile fellow or gals carries around.

Besides, for most laptops, two batteries worth will far outlast any "long-life" laptop's single charge life. I'm not saying it's the ultimate in convenience, but if long life is really, really important to you, get the machine you really want and will be productive on, and then cough up for another battery.

Re:Apple iBook G4

[YetAnotherName]

Yeah, but MacOS X is Unix anyway; I've been able to do a lot of my Linux application development on MacOS X with few problems.

Besides,

autoconf

is a wonderful tool.