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[tickmike]

I have started looking for a Laptop for my daughters xmas present and I'm shocked at the poor battery life of 2- 3 hours with others (normally with poorer spec's) up to 5-8hrs  .
If she goes to uni I believe she can take it in to lessons, but with this low battery life it's not going to last all day  .

Does anyone know if she can plug into the mains during lessons ?.

I know you can get extra battery packs to plug in but she will not want to lug that about all day.

This is the type we are interested in.

http://www.simplyacer.com/Acer_Aspire_2920_534750.html

[oldfogy]

Does anyone know if she can plug into the mains during lessons ?.

I doubt it because of "Heath and Safety" issues of people tripping over the cable.

Plus I doubt if there would be any place to plug-in to re-charge the battery because of it possibly being stolen or damaged etc, plus I doubt if the college/school would not be insured for such items.

[UncleUB]

Does anyone know if she can plug into the mains during lessons ?.

Can you imagine if the whole class wanted to do the same............

The screen is not as bright via using the battery as being plugged into the mains.And bear in mind that those battery life figures quoted by pc makers will be slightly exaggerated.They usually say 'up to' and not 'will get'.A bit like printers really.

A few tips here to help save your battery life.

http://www.otbeach.com/travel-guides/10-ways-to-extend-laptop-battery-life.html

and here.

http://www.friedbeef.com/top-15-ways-to-extend-your-laptop-battery-life/

[camallison]

I have started looking for a Laptop for my daughters xmas present and I'm shocked at the poor battery life of 2- 3 hours with others (normally with poorer spec's) up to 5-8hrs  .
If she goes to uni I believe she can take it in to lessons, but with this low battery life it's not going to last all day  .

Does anyone know if she can plug into the mains during lessons ?.

I know you can get extra battery packs to plug in but she will not want to lug that about all day.

This is the type we are interested in.

http://www.simplyacer.com/Acer_Aspire_2920_534750.html

I know for certain that Imperial College, University College London, City University Business School and many others do have mains sockets at the seat in their lecture theatres.  It would be worth checking with the relevant uni.

Colin

[jid]

All I can advise is Dell offer laptops with a 9cell Battery.

I believe a 9cell offers just over double the life of the standard batter (2-3hours - not sure of exact numbers for 9cell)

However, a 6cell from Dell can work upto 4hours if you push all performance settings to low etc...

[tickmike]

I have sent an email to the uni she hopes to go to in the future.
 Re Dell, She has set her mind on an acer at the moment but I did look at a Dell Inspiron.
Thanks for the links.

[kitz]

I dont know if this still applies because I havent looked for a while... but in the past when looking for laptops Ive generally found that its the processor that makes all the difference to the battery life.

The last laptop of my own that I bought I specifically went for a Intel Centrino purely because it gives a much longer battery life.  That lappy is now several years old, but its still good.. and still has a decent spec, the only thing I have upgraded is more RAM.  Therefore it was well worth the additional £ for the slightly higher price of upgrading to a better processor at the time of purchase.

---

PS mine is an Acer Aspire..  and I've just checked its now nearly 4 year old  .   ....  and more importantly it still manages a good 4-5 hours on a single charge.
I bought from acerdirect.co.uk   which is part of the laptopdirect.co.uk company - who were at the time much cheaper than elsewhere... may be worth having a look?

Also just noticed that the lappy of her choice has the Centrino processor anyhow..  in fact its a more up to date version of mine.
I'm pretty sure that many other students will be in the same situation - many will have some with less battery life and the uni will have places where they can be plugged in.

[Ezzer]

The other aspect is battery management.

The number of cycles or the number of times a battery is discharged/recharged is the factor which degrades battery performance over time.

The best way of mainataining the battery in the long term is to fully charge the battery on a recharge with no interuptions and not to recharge until the battery is extreamly low. Of course this isn't always practical.
In fact when bt got the cf29 laptops for the engineers they came with a higher capacity battery but no van charger to reduce the number of recharge cycles. The cf27 I had before had about 15-20 min's of battery life depending on the temperature. some of us got a van charger when there was a seperate broadband group due to the fact the laptop gets used for testing on the fault. This would last on one charge for half a days work when new. now I'll get just over an hour, this isn't helped now as I need to plug in the charger each time it goes back in the safe in the van. I think the laptop is about 4 years old now?

During lectures things such as the speaker,dvd drive, usb devices arn't used so this helps with battery life at the time, also reducing the brightness of the screen (most laptops have a couple of function keys to easly adjust this on the spot) would help get more lift in each session. Idealy and screen should be set to the same brightness as the ambient light reflecting off the surround around the screen

[orainsear]

The best way of mainataining the battery in the long term is to fully charge the battery on a recharge with no interuptions and not to recharge until the battery is extreamly low.

That may be applicable to some older battery technologies due to the so called 'memory effect', however if you are using Lithium-Ion which doesn't suffer from this phenomenon it's actually better to partially discharge the battery and recharge; this causes less wear on the cells and will help to prolong the life.

Heat is also the enemy of Li batteries.  Higher temperatures lead to a permanent capacity loss relative to the temperature.  If you want to store an Li battery it's best to reduce it's charge level to around 40% and store in as cool an environment as possible (not freezing), e.g. waterproof sealing it in a few plastic bags and keeping it in the fridge.

[waltergmw]

It is also worth remembering that most students will have too many other things to do to remember a precise battery charging procedure and schedule.

Kind regards,
walter