Battery life of a Dell Laptop...

[Edu-IT]

I know this is probably a 'how long is a piece of string' question but how long would you expect a Dell Windows 7 laptop to run on battery for when it's just being used for browsing the web?

 

Dell Inspiron 15 Laptops | Dell United Kingdom

 

14.8v rating / 28Wh capacity

[Michael]

It is difficult to say, but I would estimate a new laptop with a new battery should last around 2 hours.

[Edu-IT]

Fair enough. That's about right then. Very low considering my old 5 year old laptop can get close to 1.5 hrs on 3/4 charge.

[Michael]

Chances are though some of the newer processors actually use the same or less power than your 5 year old laptop. Newer laptops generally have larger and/or brighter screens and better graphics too.

[witch]

I don't know if Windows 7 would make a difference - but my old Dell 505s last for about 3 hours on battery

[Michael]

The OS can contribute somewhat to power saving, but in reality it's the hardware which truly determines how much power you have to play with. Very much the same with cars how many MPG you can get.

[Edu-IT]

This isn't anything fancy, the £349 model listed on that site.

[GrumbleDook]

If you are close to the AP, don't have things like bluetooth turned on, have the screen dimmed slightly and have the funkier graphics turned off then an Inspiron 15 gives my nephew 2 hours of surfing.

 

Each bit that you can tweak to use lower CPU usage helps, he uses headphones instead of speakers (apparently that saved him 10 mins he found with some testing) and he has no USB devices plugged in.

 

Pretty sure PC Pro include it in their test ... but the last one I could find was from March last year ... and I know it didn't take into account Win7

Dell Inspiron 1545 | Laptops | Reviews | PC Pro

[Edu-IT]

Great, thanks. 2 hours seems pretty normal then.