Long battery life laptop / Reliable?

Kayalana99

Hiya guys.

Need a new laptop for work so memory isn't such a big deal - but same time a decent amount to play with would be good as I will be having a serious amount of images on my lappie over time will just mainly be used for photoshop etc & it would be nice not to have to keep going through and deleting what I don't need constantly.

Would LOVE a long battery life, my current one is glued to the wall plug... :cool: ...the longer the better.

Budget is £500 but the less the better without buying something that isn't going to last as I'm saving up for a machine for my business as well ...

I've had my fair share of £300 laptops that only seem to last a year..do not like Fuj laptops anyway.

Sorry for another laptop thread any advice welcome!

Kayalana99

Oh & I havn't had chance to try out windows 8 / touch screen...really not bothered about that stuff but I guess its unlikey I'll get a new one without it now?

forgotmyname

What do you call long battery life? 1 hour 2 hours?

Thats the issue with laptops the batteries often suck. So you spend most of the time connected to the mains anyway. You may as well buy a desktop.

Storage is cheap so not much point lugging one around when a keyring sixed memory stick can hold your whole life story and much more.

Kayalana99

Id def be wanting a laptop unfortunately as I work all round the house, the reason for a long battery life is so I can basicly take it to bed with me (my OH works long early shifts so finding were going to bed at 8pm etc some nights -_- )

Id hope for about 5-6 hours, but I know thats quite good for a laptop, storage isn't essential but if its their id appreciate it.

Battery life is key to be fair.

Mr_Toad

I was in a similar position a couple of years ago when an aging laptop needed replacing.

Unfortunately battery technology, well good battery technology, doesn't come cheap.

I made a list of what I needed from a laptop with size and battery life being very important.

I didn't want some great heavy behemoth, I wanted something I was happy to carry about all day that would last all day on a single charge for average, general usage. Being able to leave the charger at home is a real benefit.

When I'd done listing my requirements I was looking at 13" laptops in the £1000+ range. I looked at the machines that would do the job and some were fantastic while others looked and felt cheap and nasty for a £1k machine.

In the end I bought a 13" MacBook Pro, it met all my needs also I'm a Unix programmer so am more familiar with the Mac OS than Windows. It irritated me that I was going to pay for an OS and then replace it with Linux. At that time Only Dell offered Linux laptops that were any good.

I can do a 12 hour day and not need to plug it in, I'm getting a good 9 hours out of the battery and my laptop bag isn't breaking my back.

There are probably some cheaper laptops with great battery life but my list of requirements put me in the high price range :0(

A colleague has just bought one of the new i7 13" MacBook Air machines and he can get nearly 2 days average usage from a charge! I think the battery is good for over 12 hours so things are definitely improving since I got mine.

Read plenty of real life reviews and take the manufacturers battery life times with a pinch of salt.

Let us know what you go for.

Kayalana99

It's annoying me now, instead of googling 'long battery life' I started narrowing it down to say 12...8...not really coming up with much.

Best I found was Acer C720-2800 Chromebook but I don't even think this has a CD drive (or if its even a laptop lol think its just a netbook type)

You'd think that laptops being designed to be 'on the move' would be built to last longer! You might as well have a desktop then a 2hour laptop -_-

closed

batteries deteriorate over time, whatever model you buy. if you drain it in bed every day, they won't last long, making sure power saving is on, or taking the charger to bed or replacing the battery is the easiest answer, or you could buy a spare charger/new battery and if space is running out, new disk. If you disk is full, make sure you are utilising all partitions, and do a cleanup with ccleaner, and wiztree

Mr_Toad

Kayalana99 wrote: »

It's annoying me now, instead of googling 'long battery life' I started narrowing it down to say 12...8...not really coming up with much.

Best I found was Acer C720-2800 Chromebook but I don't even think this has a CD drive (or if its even a laptop lol think its just a netbook type)

When I bought my MacBook the MacBook Air had just been released. I didn't buy one of those because it didn't have a CD/DVD drive.

However, in all the time I've had the laptop I've never put anything in the DVD drive!

If you're going to use it to watch DVDs then battery life is going to really suffer.

Kayalana99 wrote: »

You'd think that laptops being designed to be 'on the move' would be built to last longer! You might as well have a desktop then a 2hour laptop -_-

You'd think so but, think about it, most laptops never move off the desk, sofa, bed or out of the house. A lot of the corporate ones never leave the office so battery life isn't a big problem.

I'm out and about a lot so use a laptop as they were initially intended rather than as a small neat replacement for the huge tower system PCs that take up a lot of room.

For a lot of people laptop means any room in the house but never far from a power point.

Cisco001

it depends on how much photo editing u do. powerul laptop for photo/ video edit mean u need dedicated video card= short battery life.
so u either choose powerful but short battery. or slower with long battery

closed

why does photo editing require a powerful video card, it's displaying a static image, and everything available is capable of playing a video - my dedicated video card is disabled, just gobbles up power.

Kayalana99

closed wrote: »

batteries deteriorate over time, whatever model you buy. if you drain it in bed every day, they won't last long, making sure power saving is on, or taking the charger to bed or replacing the battery is the easiest answer, or you could buy a spare charger/new battery and if space is running out, new disk. If you disk is full, make sure you are utilising all partitions, and do a cleanup with ccleaner, and wiztree

Hmm yea thanks for this.

Def think about just getting a cheap laptop and buying 2 spare chargers (so I have 3 ) and litter them round the house.

I'm well to lazy to unplug it everywhere I go...