How long should a battery last?

[button_ripple]

How long should a 6-cell battery last, if it is only running the OS (not being used)

also,

How long should a 4-cell battery last? (same as above!)

Just curious really as i have had a look round and nowhere has a definative answer!

[tmcd35]

What processor is being used? Does the processor have power saving? Is it enabled? What graphics chip? Motherboard chipset? How high is the brightness on the monitor? Is Wifi tuned on? Is bluetooth turned on? How long is a piece of string?

My battery is totally fcuk'd! I've over charged it and now it can only do 20min with the OS idle.

Most new off the shelf laptops with 4-cell batteries and Core 2 processors would probablt do around 1.5 - 2 hr battery life if wifi/bluetooth/cd are all off.

[bizzel]

Most new off the shelf laptops with 4-cell batteries and Core 2 processors would probablt do around 1.5 - 2 hr battery life if wifi/bluetooth/cd are all off.

I'd be a little more optimisitc - our Dell 610s at work get around 2.5 hours with the wireless on and the backlight on auto-adjust. They're C2D 1.6Ghz machines with 1GB ram. Hope that helps a little. A 6 cell battery will realistically get you 40% more battery life over a 4 cell.

[button_ripple]

I was only wondering as i have brought myself a new dell vostro, with a 6-cell battery that lasts around 4-5 hours with no special settings. Wireless on, screen low, nothing else.

I got a 2.0 GHz AMD Turion x2 and 2GB RAM. It appears that this is a very good time then!!

[tmcd35]

I'd say so. If I remember rightly the Turion is the Mobile version of the Athlon. The exact same laptop with the Athlon, running at the same spec, would have a lower battery life. Mobile processor basically reduce the clock speed when the machine is idle. So your probably running at something like 700mhz instead of 2Ghz and this is what improves the battery life.

Unfortuantly there are no hard fast rules for 'this many cells will give you this amount of battery life'.

Well done, good buy.