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?"

Toshiba Satellite

[mokomull]

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

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.

Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a two year old battery in my Powerbook and it still lasts about 4.5 hours. The damn thing goes forever. Just keep the screen brightness down. Besides, they look pretty and all the girls in the coffee shops come up to you!

Centrino Based

[DrAegoon]

I've been very happy with my Thinkpad R40. It has a 1.4 GHz Pentium M. As long as I use low power settings I usually get about 6 hours of life. I've heard of better, but they're usually ultraportables with tiny screens.

One problem, you won't be gaming or doing anything really CPU intensive if you want to save power. On power conserving settings, the processor runs much slower than the normal speed and the screen is not as bright, but that's going to be the case for any laptop to get the battery life it claims.

My experience

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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...

Honestly it works. I work regularly in cafes for entire days. It just takes looking like a fool for a minute, asking permission, then pluging my stuff and setting up my "office" in front of everybody, I can stay there for the whole day. And also, if you go through enough cups of coffee, I guarantee you the owner won't ever ask you to get lost, because what he earns on you certainly outweighs what he loses in electricity.

is there a technological barrier?

[LrdHlmt]

This is probably the thing that bothers me the most about laptops. I long for a "Moore's law" for batteries so your laptop would last 4 hours this year, 8 the next, 64 in two years and so on.

I know there must be some technological barrier or limit just as there is with semiconductors. If anyone has comments on that area it would be nice to hear them.

Battery = UPS

[Scarhead]

Who actually uses a laptop without plugging it in anymore? Batteries are pretty much mini-UPS systems that allow a few minutes of work here and there. I get nervous if I'm unplugged for more than a few minutes.

I think I would like a laptop with a small super-light battery since I'm not going to rely on it for long anyway.

Re:Toshiba Satellite

[Wandering Wombat]

Curse you... I was about to say that. It isn't mine, but my friends Toshiba lasted for all-night goof-off sessions at Dennys after he got some free-ware power-management software. I thought it was bull but it added about 2 hours to his batteries. I'll ask him specifically what it was and try and post back here.

Laptops with the Shortest battery life?

[BobWeiner]

Okay, so everyone's got great battery life with their laptop has posted in. What I'd like to know is: which laptop's have the shortest battery life? Was battery life a major factor in your laptop purchase? How many people here use their laptop as their desktop (i.e. plugged into the wall socket regularly)?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Toshiba Satellite

[NanoGator]

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

I have a Toshiba M-200 and I enjoy similar luck. The difference is it is a Tablet PC. Damn I love this thing. No built in optical drive, though. Great for browsing from the couch and doodling. Basically what I bought it for. 1400 by 1050 screen to boot.

You don't want to hear this

[fishbowl]

My Toshiba 450CDT, a 1997 model Pentium-I 75mhz, running linux in console mode, has a 10 hour battery life.

The only thing I've ever seen do any better, except maybe a PDA, was a Tandy Model 100.

Re:Apple iBook G4

[Otter]

Actually, Linux provides the best TiBook battery life anecdote I can offer -- I booted into Yellow Dog, updated all of the KDE source tree from CVS and started compiling, not realizing that the power cord wasn't plugged in properly. It got through Qt, arts, kdelibs, kdeadmin, kdebase, kdegraphics, kdemultimedia and a few others before running out of power. And, as the alligator said, that's without Apple's power management!

I've routinely done cross-US flights playing MP3s the whole way.

How about a universal battery pack?

[ElForesto]

I saw an ad for this [n-chargepower.com] in an airline magazine, and have entertained the thought of getting one. I have no idea how well it works.

Re:IBM T41

[Anonymous Coward]

I have at T40p with the extended battery. I have been able to watch a full 3 hour long dvd at full power with wifi off plus about another hour of word processing afterwards turning the computer back to the "word processing" battery setting.

I normally run the laptop in "Word Processing" power settings (300-600MHz) and use it at school. I get on the order of 4-5 hours with wifi enabled.

Re:The most beautiful 12" Powerbook is the BEST

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how people's needs differ: the thing I dislike most about the 12" PB is the mandatory optical drive. It makes it about the heaviest 12" laptop currently available. The last thing I need on a small laptop is an optical drive, for me it's about as useful as a floppy drive. I wish Apple would ditch it and give us a true ultraportable, like the IBM X40. They used to be the pioneers in the fields: remember the Duos? I'd buy an Apple ultraportable in a heartbeat.

Re:The most beautiful 12" Powerbook is the BEST

[plj]

I should go asleep, but I really have to reply to this...

My largest complaint about my non-DVI 12" PBook (1st generation, 867 MHz) is it's miserable battery life! When it was new, I got some 3,5 hours when the display was rather dimmed, wireless ifaces turned off and CPU usage remained low.

Now, when it is year and two monts old, I no longer can get anything over two hours. Also recently the battery meter has gone really weird, jumping from low charges to full during charging, and falling suddenly from high charges to zero when on battery (forcing the machine to sleep of course). I've tried running the battery full and empty tens of times, and also tried if PMU reset would help (it didn't).

I never had any problems like this with my former work laptop -- Compaq Evo N600c + W2k -- even though I never even attempted to do anything like battery calibration, and I hold it in a charger whenever one was nearby.

I also know that there are PC laptops, which have some +8h battery lifes, if you just replace the normally useless optical drive with extra battery, but of course Apple forces me to carry around that stupid DVD drive I needed last time perhaps sometime last week (and which I could extremely well just plug to FireWire port whenever I need it).

But well, somehow I have to bear this, as I'll give up my OS X installation when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers...

Nevertheless, laptops should have batteries like even the worst of cell phones: use at least one whole day carelessly, and then charge during the night.

Re:Trade off

[PhoenixFlare]

You have absolutely no idea how a fuel cell works, do you?

Try reading here [howstuffworks.com] or here [fuelcells.org] for starters.

Fuel cells are not gas cans, and you will certainly not be pouring gasoline into your laptop battery. Please, read before you post.

Re:The most beautiful 12" Powerbook is the BEST

[Anonymous Coward]

As stated, people's needs differ. I have attended several conferences, but I have not been in a situation where I needed to duplicate a CD yet. Besides the laptop, I carry two devices: a portable 2.5" hard disk, for big file transfers and as an up-to-date backup of my laptop hard disk, and a 128mb usb flash memory stick for small file transfers (I could also use the HD, but this is slightly more convenient). I have a small screwdrive in the HD pouch, and the portable HD also has the OS. Even if my laptop hard disk fails when I'm far from home, I can just swap in the one from the portable HD and be up again in no time.

Re:Powerbook experiences.

[rsmith-mac]

Under my 12" PB, "DVD Playback" most certainly spins down the hard drive, and it's been that way on other Apple products as long as I can remember. Now, everything else is cranked up(including the processor, oddly enough), but the hard drive is turned down, which is what allows it to run the DVD drive without such a large power hit.

Re:The most beautiful 12" Powerbook is the BEST

[huchida]

There's a few things I miss about my late, great Wallstreet Powerbook-- among them the superior keyboard-- but most of all, I miss the fact that you could swap out a drive for a second battery. With two fully charged batteries in there I could easier go for eight hours or more. It wouldn't make sense for the 12" models, but how about a second battery in the 15" or 17" Powerbooks? Yeah, you'd add a little weight, which for some reason is a huge taboo right now-- but the extra life would be well worth it.

Re:is there a technological barrier?

[LrdHlmt]

What I meant was some sort theoretical limit to a Nickel-Cadmium (or alike) battery. I was trying to make an analogy cause, you probably know, there is a limit (at least in thoery) to the speed "the best semiconductor transistor" can switch from one state to the other. Scientists are pushing the techonolgy to this limit until eventually we will have to switch to something else. So.. may be (chemical reaction batteries) as we know them have reached a limit already.

Re:Apple iBook G4

[Alan Hicks]

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

While I won't go so far as to say that my iBook G4 lasts that long, it always lasts a minimum of 4 hours of continuous use on a single battery. I have the older 800 Mhz 12" model with 640 MB of RAM (fully loaded, keeps hard disk activity down). Things light as a feather, snappy, and rarely gives me any problems.

Like the OP I'm a linux user (Slackware), but I love this little iBook. It does anything I need (I've got all my typical linux tools (like ethereal, snort, nmap, ncftp, screen, etc) compiled and running on it flawlessly. At this point, I might as well be running GNU/Darwin with a Quartz window manager. :^)

Thinkpads

[swillden]

I can't recommend the IBM Thinkpads too highly. They're not the cheapest laptops around, but they're really well-made. I have a T40 with an extended-life battery, and I can get nearly eight hours out of it if I'm careful (dim the screen, turn down the CPU clock, use Linux 2.6 laptop mode to keep the disk spun down as much as possible) and around six if I'm not (watching movies on DVD).

Beyond battery life, my T40 is built like a rock, a fact my head can attest to. I was in the passenger seat of my car a couple of months ago, with my T40 on my lap, when my wife fell asleep and went off the road, rolling the car four times starting at about 70 mph. The laptop bounced off my face, beating the hell out of it (my face, not the laptop) and was then ejected through the window. I'm not sure if the laptop broke the window or if it was already broken. The T40 was picked up from where it landed in the dirt about 100 feet from where the car stopped. Damage? Well, one of the USB ports was damaged (the one that had my mouse plugged into it -- we never found the mouse), the lid latch kind of sticks when you try to close the top, and the case has a couple of minor scratches.

I've had three previous Thinkpads, too, and they've all been excellent, well-built and well-designed machines. Some of the others didn't have great battery life, though.

IMO, if you want a really good x86-based laptop, buy a Thinkpad. If you want the best possible laptop, and don't need to run Windows, buy a Powerbook.

Disclosure: I work for IBM, and own IBM stock (and Apple stock, and Dell stock) but I don't think those facts affect my opinion. If you don't believe me, ask me about some other IBM products, like, say, Lotus Notes.

Re: Uniqueness of Powerbooks

[King_TJ]

I, too, must agree! I went with the other end of the spectrum - buying a 17" Powerbook. But in its class, it's completely unique too. I've had several buddies criticize my decision, saying "You're paying too much for too little CPU power!" and so forth, but where else can I go to get a 17" LCD panel in a laptop this thin and lightweight? Furthermore, who else offers the backlit keyboard feature, or the slot-loading DVD burner (no flimsy tray to break off)?

One of my good friends bought a high-end Sager "gaming laptop", arguing it was a much better value for his $ than my Powerbook 17" was for mine. Only 2 or 3 months later, he's already talking about getting rid of the Sager. Why? He says "The fans are too loud!" (Not only that, but its battery life is abysmal, it's "thick as a brick", and as he also complained about, the speakers are terrible in it too.)

On the plus side, the Sager uses a higher-end LCD 17" panel than my Powerbook does. (The rumors have it, Sager originally spec'd their laptops with the exact same panel Apple uses, but Apple outbid them and bought up all the supply for their Powerbooks. At that point, Sager just ordered the next model up from what Apple used.) It really does look beautiful - but a display alone doesn't make the laptop.

Re:Dell 600m Centrino - 8 Hours

[Leebert]

Is this counting the spare battery (or does the spare only kick in after 8 hours)?

Probably if it's like any of the Dells I use. On my Inspiron, putting a spare battery in the media bay drains both batteries simultaneously, resulting often in a much better that 2X gain in runtime. (For some reason when they drain together they drain slower.)

old Ibook with new battery

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a G3 ibook with a G4 ibook battery...I get around 7 hours witht he screen dim and wifi off...5 hrs with wifi on!

Re:Toshiba Satellite

[Pieroxy]

You need to turn off seti@home. That'll help your battery time.

Re:15" iBook

[NilObject]

That would be a wonderful anecdote if there actually existed a 15" iBook. Numbnuts. *sigh* If you're going to make stuff up, at least TRY to sound believeable.

Go old - PowerBook G3

[mk2mk2]

I have one of Apple's PowerBook G3 (Firewire a.k.a. Pismo a.k.a 2000) models. It's been upgraded from 400 MHz to 900 MHz and from 64MB RAM to 512. It runs Panther pretty well...I wouldn't open my 1400-picture iPhoto library on it (that's what the G5 is for :) but it does great for random web browsing, word processing, etc. You're still mostly up to date technology-wise since this machine includes an internal Airport 802.11b slot, USB, FireWire, and 10/100 Ethernet.

The key to the Pismo is that it is the last PowerBook to include an additional bay which can hold the stock DVD-ROM drive or another battery (or various third-party fixed and removable drives). If you buy one of these machines used of course you shouldn't expect too much out of the battery included but you can always add one or two high capacity batteries [macsales.com]. I have one that gives me 4-5 hours of careful use (no DVD watching) plus one original Apple battery that just gives me an hour. The only problem is weight - with two batteries installed the machine gets up to 8 or 9 pounds. But, working at a university with total WiFi coverage I find it quite worthwhile to bring everywhere I go on campus without having to pack the power adapter.

Thinkpad X40

[Anonymous Coward]

With the Ultrabase dock attached it is still smaller than most regular notebooks. With a slim battery in the base, it gets 11-13 hours. Undocked it's still superior at 6-8 hours (8 only if wifi is never used). Caveat emptor, though, buy it in a store; Thinkpads are notorious for dead pixels. Mine has an annoying one almost in the center.

Another awesome writing machine (not for DVDs, though) is the Psion Netbook. 1.1 kg, no moving parts (durable as heck), PCMCIA slot, wireless capable, good keyboard, touch-screen. Linux is also available though still a work in progress. And, back to the topic, last but not least, it gets a solid 12-14 hours between charges.

Inspiron 300m

[blackrobe28]

I've been using an Inspiron 300m for about 3 months now. I've got the extended battery, which ups the weight to about 3.2 lbs) and I can get ~8 hours using it for surfing and typing... ~6 hours playing DIVX movies at full brightness. If I want to play DVD movies, I pop it into the base which has an extra battery (this ups the weight to about 4 lbs) and I can get ~9 hours watching movies.

Electrovaya.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amongst all the hype amongst talk about PB the mail about Electrovaya SC500 Tablet PC got squashed. Take a look at
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i =180 4
The review is a little dated (Mar 2003) but a battery life of 8hrs and 17mins is still impressive!
Also to quote the site

" And that is only the performance of the 96Wh battery standard in the SC500. Imagine what the 120Wh SC800 is able to do.".

Definitely worth checking out if most of your work can be done on a (slow) tablet PC. (mail/wp).

Psion 5mx

[chimpo13]

Man, I'm late with this one. By now since there's 568 responses, I hope it gets noticed. I'll be a weenie and post it to a top response.

If your clients are just looking for something to check email, web access and are willing to save in .txt they should get a Psion 5mx. I've done plenty of research on this because that's what I need for my trip round the world. They run off AA batteries which last 20-30 hours.

But of course, it's not the newest and latest, and the screen is black and white. But if your clients are geeks, there is a linux version of it.

Good retailer of refurbished ones [fsbusiness.co.uk]. Linux version [sourceforge.net].

If anyone buys one, please mention my name: Dave Smith. I'm riding a small motorcycle round the world and Paul at Psionflexi has been really helpful.

Supporting a CEOs laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had to have a laptop for a CEO that could support 2 batteries and you could recharge the batteries on a charger (external to the laptop) is there such a thing? I support a CEO who travels between offices, airplanes, hallways, hotel rooms 24x7 and I'm looking for a solution that will allow him to never have to power down (even to change batteries). Is this possible? As I say, he's often in hallways and stuff so the more cordless hours a day the better.

Re:IBM X40

[dublin]

> on Linux there's no practical way to get the OS
> not to access the drive at least a few times per
> minute. It would be nice if there were.

Of course there is a way. It's called laptop_mode kernel patch and 2.6 kernel has it (also, the 2.4 kernel from fedora 1, has it). If you have that, then you mess a little with /proc/sys/vm/bdflush and with hdparm you set the drive to spin down every 20 seconds or so and you are ready to go!

And the /. crowd wonders why ordinary computer users won't run Linux as a desktop/laptop OS...