Long battery life full laptop

[SimpleSi]

Has anyone bought a "full sized" laptop (min screen res 1024x768 and internal DVD drive) recently with a battery life that can actually last 3 hours in normal classroom use?

 

Could you let me know make/model and price please?

 

 

regards

 

Simon

[AngryTechnician]

I bought a Dell Vostro 1220 for myself in the summer, with the extended battery it lasts a good 3 hours, and I'm very happy with it.

 

List price then was £589 but I did have 4GB RAM in it... plus you should get a discount if buying a few through a reseller, such as the lovely Westwood Associates who sorted me out with mine.

[steveg]

I haven't used them personally, just saw the ad on their website, but the new Acer Aspire Timeline appears to offer an 8 hour battery life, and seems quite reasonably priced. Its on the first page at Home at the moment if you want to have a look.

 

Steve

[srochford]

Not sure if you'd call it full sized but the HP Elitebook 2530 has a 1280x800 screen and a battery life approaching 8 hours (depends what you do but I've had it running fairly heavily for >5 hours).

 

Bad news is, it's not cheap and, no, you can't have mine :-)

[localzuk]

The new Apple Macbook Pro's have between 7 and 8 hour batteries now. My old one handles 4 hours of DVD watching at least, sometimes up to 5 hours. These start at around £760 from Insight using Catalyst pricing.

 

The Macbook (not pro) 13" can supposedly handle 5 hours too. These are about £630 starting.

[deKay]

Has anyone bought a "full sized" laptop (min screen res 1024x768 and internal DVD drive) recently with a battery life that can actually last 3 hours in normal classroom use?

 

MacBook Pro. Depending on the size, does 5-8 hours.

[SimpleSi]

The Acer looks good except that it doesn't seem to be available with XP downgrade rights and I'm going to be the last person on this earth who uses Vista in a primary school

 

regards

 

Simon

[SC-UK]

My old one handles 4 hours of DVD watching at least, sometimes up to 5 hours. .

 

Don't start lol. I have an 18 month old MacBook Pro, and was purposely trying to drain the battery the other night to give it a full cycle.

 

It gave in after about four and a half hours of rendering some video footage (some of it HD). Amazed me that a normal battery (and not a new one), could do so well. Really impressed. If it would have lasted that long if I had not wanted to drain it, I doubt very much

[SimpleSi]

Interestingly, I'd stopped buying Dell's as they started wanting stupid money for dual vista/xp machines but I see there now back to charging £5 (or nothing in some cases) - its nice to see the capitalist market economy working sometimes

 

regards

 

Simon

[AngryTechnician]

I never really noticed that as I just stopped buying XP. 7 is available for us now, so why pay extra for something two major versions behind?

 

Also, I tend to treat the pricing on Dell's website as little more than a starting point, resellers can offer considerably better pricing in many cases.

[SimpleSi]

Well having about 7 quotes from various people I think I can state that you can't buy a low - medium (£300 - £500) cost long life laptop.

 

I think there's a market there for someone

 

One of the worst shames was that I can buy an HP 1540 with a 6 cell and buy an additional 8 cell battery but I can't buy one with just the 8 cell and just pay the diff

 

regards

 

Simon

[mac_shinobi]

new mac book pro 17" screen about 8 hours of battery life and away I go