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24 Hour Laptops From HP?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i'll-believe-it-when-i-can-fly-to-tokyo-and-back dept.

daveyboy79 writes "This article from the BBC shows HP's new laptop, the HP EliteBook 6930p. Configured with several options, such as the 80Gb SSD and the mercury-free LED displays, it allows users to get 24 hours of non-stop computing." The real question is, are we talking 24 hours of word processing? Or 24 hours of actually using your computer?

16 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Is word processing not using a computer? by Kentaree · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For many business users, word processors and excel account for the vast majority of time spent on computers, if they managed 24 hours for just that they'd have a viable market.

    1. Re:Is word processing not using a computer? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For many business users, word processors and excel account for the vast majority of time spent on computers, if they managed 24 hours for just that they'd have a viable market.

      Plus e-mail. After all, most of what's involved in composing an e-mail is word processing, is it not?

      Editing source code isn't fundamentally different than word processing, either.

      Nor is posting a story to Slashdot.

      Really, the comment about "are we talking 24 hours of word processing, or 24 hours of actually using your computer." is somewhat inane. Not everyone uses their computer for gaming.

      OTOH, while I code, I like to listen to music and perhaps have a browser running. Plus e-mail. So with all that multitasking going on there's going to be some swapping, so it's going to eat through battery a bit quicker than if I only had Word up. On second thought, Word is such a bloated pig, it would probably use up more memory than SciTE, a Python interpreter or two, audacious, two Opera or Firefox windows.

      So let's go back to saying the comment was probably inane.

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    2. Re:Is word processing not using a computer? by einer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For many business users, word processors and excel account for the vast majority of time spent on computers, if they managed 24 hours for just that they'd have a viable market.

      Vast majority implies that there is a market for word processor appliances. It would be easy to produce a black and white appliance that ran a single light office suite that lasted for more than 24 hours.

      This is marketing. Very few people spend a vast majority of their time word processing. I would venture to guess that the time spent word processing is absolutely dwarfed by the time spent browsing the internet.

    3. Re:Is word processing not using a computer? by The+Great+Pretender · · Score: 3, Insightful
      "The real question is are we talking 24 hours of word processing, or 24 hours of actually using your computer."

      What a completely moronic statement.

      --
      A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
    4. Re:Is word processing not using a computer? by TobyWong · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not just about "graphic intensive games".

      You use wireless, you code - do you compile? Do you listen to music?

      These are just a few things that will make that 24h number shrink that were alluded to in the summary. No game playing required.

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      - Toby
    5. Re:Is word processing not using a computer? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Ignoring the fact that many developers will do a partial build from time to time, an IDE is doing a lot more in the background that a word processor. It's checking your syntax, suggesting functions, performing auto-completion. All of this work is more complex that the automatic spell checker and grammar checker.

      Who said anything about an IDE? And do you have any idea how necessarily complex grammar checkers are? English is a LOT harder for a computer to parse than Python, Java, C or (insert your favorite here).

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  2. Who Cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    24 hours of anything is pretty damn good.

  3. Marketing speak by Beatbyte · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It probably means low levels of IO and the display cranked to the dimmest levels all while not using the wireless radio. I think we would have heard about an increase in battery efficiency of this scale in something other than an HP laptop.

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  4. Databases for CRM. by BitterOldGUy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A lot of the laptop crowd have those customer relation management packages that can be database intense. And I guess that means the SSD would be working a bit. I wonder if the power consumption of SSDs increase with use?

    1. Re:Databases for CRM. by tgd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Most of that has gone online.

      These days the power used for a web browser and the broadband modem that's built into the laptop seem to be the biggest factor in usage for a large swath of business laptop users.

      I suspect whatever power is needed for playing MP3's and keeping a browser up is typical for most non-business users.

  5. They didn't state where the breakthrough came from by Politicus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even with the efficiency gains they mention, this battery needs to be in the 15,0000-20,000mAh range. While that would be awesome, I'm really skeptical. When high capacity NiMH batteries came out, the gains turned out to cost battery lifetime (charge cycles). There may be something similar hiding behind this announcement.

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    Politicus
  6. Weight and size? by BlueParrot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is not difficult to get a long battery life if you use a very large battery, so how large is this laptop, and more importantly how heavy is it? I assume it is not quite the eeepc.

  7. Re:They didn't state where the breakthrough came f by Politicus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    CDW specs the battery at 6450mAh and this is an add-on unit so together with a typical 4400mAh battery, that only gives you 10,850mAh of juice which means that the 24 hour run time is only achievable with a marathon typing session where the screen is at its darkest setting. This configuration, which likely also turns the laptop into a beast, would really deliver something closer to 12 hour run time in practice.

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    Politicus
  8. Re:Mercury free LEDs by orasio · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, I think "mercury free" was irrelevant to the battery life issue, but it's relevant for backlights.

    Usual backlights do have mercury in them, the LED ones are mercury free, like saying "light" SSD, "fast" discrete graphics, or "low power" Atom CPU.

  9. More battery! by LoudMusic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They achieve this run time with more efficient parts and ... more battery! I wish other manufacturers (APPLE!) would take this approach. Another pound of battery in laptops, or a couple ounces in phones, and they'd hit a seriously useful run time. In most cases this would more than double their time between recharges.

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  10. Who needs 24 hours of runtime? by dj245 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Anything much over 10 hours and the user is going to run out of juice long before the laptop does.

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