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

The ones with the longest life

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the ones that stay plugged into the wall.

Toshiba Satellite

[mokomull]

My Toshiba Satellite A45-S121 gets 4-5 hours of battery life on dim backlight.

Re:Toshiba Satellite

[nocomment]

How about the new laptop from 3M? They've invented a method by which you use a stylus with an embedded graphite core which actually transposes the text onto a flat and flimsy surface manufactured with some sort of parchment-like material.

Comes with a lot of games too!

I've often found...

[craenor]

That if you leave it in suspend the whole time, or bettery yet HIBERNATE...you can get it to last for days.

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

Apple iBook G4

[crimson_alligator]

My G4-800 iBook has lasted at least six hours, perhaps longer.

I'm a Linux user but Mac laptops are lovely, with excellent battery life. Too bad Airport Express (and power management?) isn't supported on Linux PPC.

IBM X31 -- 4 n change hours

[mrgreenfur]

I have an IBM X31 and the standard battery. With the low power settings on (you're just writing an article, right?), wifi on, and the dock at home, it lasts just under 5 hours.

If you want to burn cd's, bring the base and put a batter in it and it'll last another 3 or so hours.

If you want ultra long battery life, get the super extended batter that clips onto the bottom, just like a base. It'll give you almost 9 hours!

This laptop is incredible. I highly suggest it for anyone who doesn't want to lug around a 6lb laptop.

Centrino

[PCM2]

Not to sound like an Intel commercial, but that's largely what Intel's Centrino platform is all about. It's designed as a mix of processor and chipset that allows the system to maximize battery life.

I have a Fujitsu Lifebook 5010 that reliably gets me just under 5 hours battery life, maybe more like 4 hours if I have wireless enabled (and there's a hardware switch on the case). Something like playing a DVD is going to suck even more battery, because of the need to spin the drive motor, but I'd wager I have enough juice for that most times.

Centrino isn't a blindingly huge advantage, though. Fujitsu makes a non-Centrino version of the same laptop that comes with 802.11g, and I understand it only gets marginally shorter battery life, and that's all from anecdotal accounts. Centrino does a good job, but a big reason this model's battery lasts so long is because it's 900MHz (so doesn't run as hot, so doesn't need as much energy to run the fan) and it only has a 10 inch screen.

iBook G3

[bedouin]

Mine regularly lasts close to 6 hours on the battery, at least while doing non-intensive tasks and keeping the brightness at a reasonable level. Not to mention it never heats up to an unbearable level, even on a summer day; I've heard its fan come on maybe 5 or 6 times since I've owned it, and its usually been when I had it on a heat conductive surface (like a blanket or thick carpet).

Nothing beats Apple laptops in my opinion, especially in the low-end. Something comparable to a 12" iBook in size, weight, and battery life, ends up costing $1500 in the PC world (at least when I checked out the Thinkpads).

Re:The most beautiful 12" Powerbook is the BEST

[Jeffrey Baker]

The best part of the 12" is it has a DVD burner (or CD burner, depending) permanently installed, and it has the wireless and bluetooth built-in. On so many other compact laptops you either have a dongle-attached CD-ROM puck, or a CD-ROM in a device bay that you can swap out for a battery, but without the extra battery you get shitty battery life. The Powerbooks gets good life with the optical drive installed, and you don't need a lot of optional junk for wireless comms.

I once watched "The Thin Red Line" DVD on a cross-country airplane trip, so I know the PowerBook gets at least three hours from the battery even with the optical drive, the backlight, and the sound running. Of course I had the wireless devices disabled and the CPU speed set to the minimum.

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:My experience

[caluml]

You'd be surprised how easy it is to go to the 'net cafe owner behind the counter and ask politely if you can plug into that wall socket there...

But that involves breaking the cardinal rule of geekdom - i.e. never speak to anyone if at all possible. Gruff barking/grunting should be about the tops for a general social encounter such as that.

Fujitsu Lifebook P-5020D - 8-11 hours

[tezzer]

My Fujitsu Lifebook P-5020 claims to have 11 hours of battery life, but I've never gotten more than 8. Of course, this is with the built in wireless on, so I'm sure if I turned off the wireless and dimmed the screen I'd get more.

It's a small laptop with a slower chip (~1Ghz), which is exactly what I was looking for. The laptop almost fits in a 1-gallon freezer bag, but remains fully useful. I carry it around in the front pocket of my backpack or a thin leather valise. It plays DVDs just fine, burns CDs just quickly enough, has excellent wireless antennae, and the long battery life and portable size make it fit my needs for a non-desktop-replacement portable computing machine. Apparently you can get it to dual boot your favorite distro, but I haven't had the motivation to tackle that yet.

Incidentally, I bought the machine from Portable One in San Jose, and I recommend them- good customer service and good selection, with reasonable prices.

Powerbook experiences.

[jelwell]

My old Titanium powerbook stood up to the DVD test. Right before the second Matrix movie came out I sat down and tested the length of the battery. I put the powerbook in "DVD Playback" mode in the Energy Saving system panel - which means "NO ENERGY SAVING" (brightness all the way up, no spinning down of hard drives). Anyways, the Titanium 15" powerbook was able to display the whole movie beginning to end. Which was great for waiting in line.

My newer Aluminum 15" (firewire 800) Powerbook can NOT do this. I can NOT play an entire DVD from start to finish with sound and everything running at full tilt. It's possible with some fudging of settings I could get a whole movie to work -but I haven't tried.

I imagine the two biggest consumers of power during DVD playback are
1) DVD drive spinning
- this could probably be mitigated by ripping the movie into quicktime and playing off your hard drive (which I believe consumes less power than the DVD drive)
2)Powering the speakers.
- Someone clue me in here, but I imagine you'd save power if you plugged your headphones in rather than powering the onboard speaker. And you'd get a better experience plugging the sound output into an entertainment center too. ;)

Joseph Elwell.

Lame

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

There are all sorts of problems with this approach. The manufacturers claim that the surface is rewritable but after just one write/erase cycle you're seeing degradation of fidelity. You can't buy a surface with a backlight (though I believe you can get a light attachment for some styli, at many times the price of the original equipment, though with a limited field of illumination). One good thing about this approach is that the data has a long lifetime. If you use a decent quality surface the lifetime is longer than you need to worry about. But connectivity is poor and don't even think about wireless. It's also worth noting that if you want color you need extra equipment, and if you want a wide color gamut this equipment may start getting bulky and incompatible with the erase feature.

One nice thing is that nowadays this approach is quite interoperable with PCs and Macs. Tools to convert to the 3M format have been available for decades and now tools to convert from 3M to a digital format are almost as ubiquitous. On the down side there are some claims that the 3M approach can harm the environment, after all, it does grow on trees. On the other hand a high proportion of discarded equipment can be recovered and processed for reuse.

IBM X40

[mertner]

My IBM X40 (it's a Pentium M, 1GHz) runs 7 hours on a charge of the 8-cell battery.

Total weight is only 1.6kg with the battery, and the laptop is great for everything except graphics-intensive games. The downside is that there is no DVD drive except with a docking station, and it has only a 10.4" screen running 1024x768.

It suits me perfectly for a transatlantic flight though and plays DivX very well for several hours :)

Called!

[jht]

I have a new 1.5 GHz 15" PowerBook. It gets a consistent 4+ hours of life in "regular" use - that doesn't mean watching a DVD, but it does mean writing documents, surfing the net, checking my e-mail, and so on. It also gets that kind of life with both Bluetooth and AirPort Extreme live and kicking.

For power conservation, I let the processor cycle down as needed, and I spin down the HD after 5 minutes. I also have the brightness dialed back to about 70% when on battery - that's usually good enough for me. But that's all the steps i need to get over 4 hours. If I were a little more aggressive, I might be able to break 5.

Part of the difference I think is the newer PPC 7457 processors - I believe they're pretty light on the power consumption (I don't have the actual specs handy).