Slashdot Mirror
Asus Promises 12-Hour Battery Life In New High-End Laptop
Asus' new high-end laptop could finally be the traveler's best accoutrement, touting twelve-hour battery life thanks to intelligent, second-by-second switching between the two GPUs and automatic, on-the-fly re-clocking of the Intel Core i7 CPU. All this also comes in with a price tag of just over $1,000. "ASUS's solution is different because it's user-transparent; even a novice user will get the fullest possible benefit because the laptop itself is deciding when to switch. The same principle applies to the dynamic CPU clocking. ASUS includes a desktop widget to track CPU clock speed. While using the UL80JT, I could see it moving up and down with what I did; up with program openings and CPU-intensive processes, and way down at idle. Between the GPU switching, dynamic clocking, and ASUS's other power management features, the UL80JT manages to consume less than half as much power as the unibody Macbook while browsing."
Promising 12 battery life is one thing.
Actually delivering acpi that is not crap is another.
I guess we'll wait and see.
ASUS's solution is different because it's user-transparent; even a novice user will get the fullest possible benefit because the laptop itself is deciding when to switch. The same principle applies to the dynamic CPU clocking.
So what they mean is that the laptop will be deciding when it should be fast or slow, with no input from the user? How's this different than the gazillion power management settings we have now (except switching between GPUs of course)?
I am also not sure I like the sentiment of "user-independent" is somehow more beneficial to the user. It sounds too much like the drivel from the RIAA/MPAA: "we will enhance customer value by increasing the price and decreasing what they can do with it."
Thing is, for, say, students (and not necessarily HS or undergraduates, this applies to law/med/grad as well), this is nearly the perfect blend. A laptop that *can* last for 5 hrs while note-taking and yet be used for gaming or general more sophisticated work with stats packages/modeling tools/etc as well. At $1,000 price point it's still not that expensive, in the same ballpark as the base model macbook/macbook pro. If this does get the battery life they claim, or close to it, I could see myself buying one...
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Yeah, and we'll have a man on Mars in 2035, Obama will change Washington, and Duke Nuke'em Forever will be out any day now.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You are the reason a 5-room bungalow near Cupertino costs $2.5 million.
I think this article uses >$1000 to mean "high end" because it assumes the people buying them are not insane or status-whores.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I wish they'd start speccing battery life numbers based off h264 playback rather than DVDs. Or more to the point, include a dedicated lower-power decoder chip. I haven't touched DVDs in quite a long time, but between ripped movies and web streaming, there's a ton of h264 playback going on. I haven't done benchmarks on battery drain, but the extra CPU juice required (compared to mpeg2/4) seems to more than offset the savings of not having a dvd drive spinning the whole time. The high WiFi activity during most video playback doesn't help either.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
8 days for an RMA turnaround? That's not bad at all. It can be a month or more here in the US, depending on who you're RMAing to.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
What "protection"? Unlocked phones should be mandated by law like in EU (or at least some countries of EU).
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
If I'm not mistaken, batteries generate less heat when you pull out less current. A battery made up of very many cells should dissipate less heat per unit area than a more compact one.