laptop battery life

[Hollie1985]

Members of Edugeek, I have a question for you...

 

If you work looking after the IT for a school/college/academy, imagine you have 100laptops -the 100pupils need laptop access.

 

What do you do about the laptops and charge-if for example the charge is standard 3.5hour and classroom 204 needed the laptops straight after the lesson and the charge has now gone what do you do as an IT Manager?

[kmount]

Have spare batteries?

[Hollie1985]

i've priced up batterys £120 each which is half the price of the laptop trying to find a different solution..

[Haptic]

i've priced up batterys £120 each which is half the price of the laptop trying to find a different solution..

 

give us a shout for your batteries hollie as they sound expensive!

[Martin]

A 100-way mains adapter?

 

(although H&S might be unhappy )

 

mb

[kmount]

Wow, those are some expensive batteries.

 

In my previous life we used to buy a multibay charger and a spare battery for the laptops (in trolleys). That said, we rarely used them as the charge was pretty good and charged up over the lunch break in the trolleys.

 

Cost per battery on those were closer to £50. (quick rm search for mobile one battery).

[mac_shinobi]

use mains or run the laptops in energy saver mode with a slightly dimmer screen etc

 

The apple laptops have a 7 to 8 hour running time which in real time I would guess would be about 5 hours at least.

 

Think there was another thread on here where they created or someone was trying to make a laptop charger that sat on each desk so everyone could connect to mains and ethernet

[strawberry]

give up on laptops and use thin clients with decent desks so they computer can be hidden away. much cheaper over 5 years.

[bossman]

@Hollie1985:

 

Is room 204 able to seat 100 students at one time or is this a hyperthetical question?

 

As with most laptop trollies I would as IT manager structure the timetabled use of these in batches of 30 and making sure that they are charged alternately so there is always 1 laptop trolley fully charged.

 

But if as you say you need 100 at one time then spare batteries are the only way forward with quick charging facilities.

[ahuxham]

Be proactive in the way the laptops are used and managed,

 

For example, maximize battery life to start with;

 

apply power management utilities;

keep screen brightness low;

optimize for performance rather than best appearance;

use 9 cell batteries as a start or just plain old 6 cell;

and with the introduction of SSD's, consider investing in those, as they slash power consumption but quite a bit and aren't that expensive anymore

[Hollie1985]

thanks guys some good ideas there will thank the posts as soon as

[mac_shinobi]

If you change hardware acceleration to medium or low does that help with power ?

[Halfmad]

Sounds like laptops might not be the solution you're. I agree with Strawberry, thin client might be a better solution if you're not needing the classes to be mobile. Alternatively have charging stations in the desks.

[Little-Miss]

The Toshiba n200 Netbooks i have just bought apparently have 9 hours battery life...