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Thread ID: 77248	2007-03-03 19:26:00	Don't get me wrong - I like my laptop but	Thomas01 (317)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
529722	2007-03-03 19:26:00	I have been puzzled by my laptop experience. I am on my 4th one now. In all cases I have been disappointed by the length of time the battery keeps the thing going. Now I know time goes by super fast when you are enjoying working but even so it's puzzling. All my friends and relatives who have laptops say the same thing, and like me often find using the mains is the only solution. I am retired for ages but even so can visualise offices being equipped with mains points for their staff, but I see students carrying the things. My question is "What facilities do universities, colleges (perhaps even high schools) provide so their students can use their laptops?" Just for interest I find the general consensus is that for normal (ie not too expensive) laptops anything above one hour is risky. Tom	Thomas01 (317)
529723	2007-03-03 19:32:00	Universities frequently provide study areas which have power points for laptops, and wireless internet access. Some universities (eg. Victoria Uni in Wellington) provide (almost) campus wide WiFi access, and have power points scattered around where students are likely to sit during downtime. In terms of my laptop battery experiences, I have gone from one end of the scale to the other. My previous laptop would last about 40mins on a single charge, but my current laptop lasts 6-7hrs on a single charge (single battery - Dell Inspiron 640m, with 9 cell battery). It seems that a lot of the "laptops" sold in retail stores for normal consumers have very low battery capacities, to help push prices down. Corporations tend to use more expensive, "business-oriented" laptops which can have battery lives up to 12hrs (obviously depending on make/model). These tend to be have less emphasis on multimedia, and more on business productivity.	somebody (208)
529724	2007-03-03 19:35:00	Having become the recent owner of a laptop I expected rubbish performance from the battery. I had it connected to the mains for a few hours and then tried it on battery. It reported that it was 97% full and would last 1 hour 18mins. Then again its an old battery.................I find with portable phones and cellphones if your talk time suddenly starts to become extra short its time for a new battery.	pctek (84)
529725	2007-03-03 20:20:00	Our laptop has a theoretical battery life of 3 hours. In practice it's half that. Because we so seldom use it on battery it's not a problem. If it was I'd just buy a second battery.	Greg (193)
529726	2007-03-03 21:34:00	Our laptop has a theoretical battery life of 3 hours. In practice it's half that. Because we so seldom use it on battery it's not a problem. If it was I'd just buy a second battery. Yeah great idea Greg. But in a way I have already done that. When my battery started going down a bit I bought a new one, keeping the old one as a backup. But my HP laptop can only charge the battery if its in the computer. Which is irritating and I am a bit surprised HP didn't think of this during the design stage. So of course when my battery starts going down I cannot just change it with a spare being charged up. My Olympus camera can do this - the charging unit is separate from the camera and while I am using the camera I can have another battery being charged. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, the camera lasts for so long without being charged I have never yet felt the need of a spare battery. Tom	Thomas01 (317)
529727	2007-03-03 21:41:00	It depends on what you are doing while running on battery power. I have an Acer TM4202LMi and used it a lot while on my OE last year. Mostly used it to watch movies while on a train / plane. I could easily watch 2 movies without running out of power. (About 4 hours) My laptop has power options so you can set the brightness of the screen, CPU speed and enable / disable LAN, WLAN etc If i use it with the WLAN on and full brightness and CPU power the battery only lasts about 2 hours.	CYaBro (73)
529728	2007-03-04 05:04:00	I bought a sony vaio fe-38gp this year for uni, and i find it only lasts about 1.5 hours or less, im contemplating the larger battery but it is around $650...	lagbort (5041)
529729	2007-03-04 05:57:00	It is my theory that the cheaper the laptop the more inferior the battery. They've got to skimp somewhere after all but do the batteries of more expensive laptop actually last longer?	FoxyMX (5)
529730	2007-03-05 04:01:00	There are a lot of compromises involved . The faster the CPU, the higher the battery load . Fancier video taker more current . Faster disks can have higher power requirements . Amp-hours cost . They cost money, space and weight . A very expensive laptop might be very thin and very light . So it can't have a very high capacity battery . It might have a comparatively slow CPU to give longer run time . Or an optional external battery pack to give longer run time . A cheap one might have plenty of room for a high capacity battery, but have a low capacity one to keep the price down . Or it might have a slow CPU and very good run time . You have to decide what you need, and shop accordingly . Many "laptops" are actually intended for desktop use, and tend to have a very short battery run time . Some have even been sold without batteries . Some I've seen didn't even have battery power management options .	Graham L (2)
529731	2007-03-06 06:13:00	tim@ghostknife:~$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info present: yes design capacity: 6000 mAh last full capacity: 3072 mAh battery technology: rechargeable design voltage: 14800 mV design capacity warning: 250 mAh design capacity low: 150 mAh capacity granularity 1: 10 mAh capacity granularity 2: 25 mAh model number: JM-6 serial number: 4751 battery type: LION OEM info: Hewlett-Packard Notice that my battery's last full capacity is only half of what it was designed to hold - cheap batteries lose their capacity over time. This one is not quite two years old. With the WIFI card on it lasts less than an hour. Otherwise it can last for over 2 hours.	TGoddard (7263)
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