Laptop Battery Life

[SimpleSi]

Has anyone bought some laptops recently with more than a 2 hour, real classroom use, battery life?

Our recent batch of laptops (Fujitsu AMILO's) last about 1.5 hrs so I'm trying to source some others that last longer for another school

I know about the RMs

regards

Simon

[broc]

Last October we bought 30 DELL Latitude D510 notebooks, substituting the internal optical drive for an additional media bay battery. This gives us a whole days use. Saving the cost of the optical drive helps towards the battery cost too, and is something less for the students to break.

Brian

[alan-d]

Laptops - RockDirect do several models with 6 hr batteries at a good price, good specs too, they are also developing a secure cabinet which looks impressive, which I would recommend if using mobile classrooms. http://www.rockdirect.com/ Ask for Marvin - he's very helpful and not at all pushy like some.
Most of our laptops are used all day every day and it's rare we get a flat battery.

copied from an older - post

and no I'm not on a commission :P

[SimpleSi]

@alan
Which model have you got and what do call a nice price?

@broc
Didn't know about that option - what was the price diff approx?

regards
Simon

[alan-d]

@alan
Which model have you got and what do call a nice price?

regards
Simon

PCTS 1.6 Centrino - 256 RAM 40 GB HD, 14.1" TFT, Intergrated 802.11g, built in web cam, DVD/CDRW , 3 yrs collect & return warranty. + carry case.

Not sure of the individual price as we got a batch of 16 at a time with a Bretford standard charging/storage unit.

The whole package was just under 11k. I believe the laptops alone were about 8k for 16.

[broc]

The DELL online configurators can be a nightmare! I usually produce a basic config of what I want, email it to my DELL client manager and tell him what bits I want adding/removing and how many I want to buy.
If memory serves me correctly, the net difference for the twin battery setup was around £30 extra per laptop. If you run off a Latitude D510 configuration at www.dell.co.uk you will get to the point where you can select an additional battery, the feature for a D series Latitude is called "D/Family 48WHr Media Bay Battery for dual battery support (+£70)". Deleting the CDRW from the config saved £35-40 or so.

We can comfortably run all day on the base battery plus media bay battery. I bought a spare optical drive to keep my technician happy in case he needs to rebuild an image from scratch. My policy now is not to provide curriculum PCs or laptops with FDD or Optical drives. Saves a fair bit and there is less to break!

Watch out though for the media bay 'locking' screw. It stops the kids from ejecting the 2nd battery and is a GOOD idea. Believe it or not this is £10 as a DELL spare part, for something which is 4mm long and 1mm dia. Our laptops came without these screws and DELL wanted to charge me for them. They then offered them at a discounted price of £3, I made it a customer satisfaction 'issue' having just spent £20k (laptops plus other bits) and got sent a box with around 300! We have wondered about selling the spares on EBAY ar £1 each (just joking!) .

Brian