Best battery life laptops

[shukudai]

I'm looking to pick up a new device for school.

I'm looking for something with stupid good battery life, not a lot of horse power, mostly for taking notes, light browsing / messaging / video, and light, since i'll be carrying it around a lot.

I have a lot of 2 1/2 - 3 hour lectures, occasionally on the same day, so I spend 5-6 hours in class, and a few hours in between doing whatever, and I don't want to have to carry around a plug and find an electrical outlout all the time.

I'm open to any options, people have suggested macbook air's since they presumably have the highest battery life, a few specific PC models, netbooks (I really don't care for them too muc, screen size, keybnoard size, etc, but would be open to something just a bit bigger), some people suggested just getting an ipad, and bringing around a bluetooth keyboard and stand.

Ideas?

[xerodok]

Please do not buy a Macbook Air.

I currently use an ASUS EeePC for work and personal use. You can probably stretch about 4 or 5 hours out of the battery life with a good power saver mode profile. They're great for everything you had mentioned you'd be using it for above.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Id=1&name=ASUS

They have dual core ones now that are even more badass and are generally the same size.

[Julian]

http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-UL80JT-A1...8033118&sr=1-1

I still own an original UL80VT, which was the first laptop in this series, and I still get 4~6 hours of watching video or playing games, 6~8ish hours of normal use with bright screen, and I do get between 9~12 hours when on the most conservative settings.

The only problem with the original UL80VT was that the build quality of the laptop was pretty meh. I never had much problems with the keyboard, but the part that connects the monitor to the rest of the laptop is kinda flimsy, and feels like if I applied a decent amount of force to it it would fall off, although I'm sure it wouldn't unless I dropped it or something, but I'm super careful with my toys. Also, I'm pretty sure the newer models have this issue ironed out.

And from a little bit of research, it seems like this laptop makes a lot of noise, but I found a fix for that if you end up getting it:

Spoiler: show

This way you can remove the high pitched noise.
My friend had the same laptop and I fixed the problem myself.

High pitched noise comes from the inductors on the motherboard.

Intel invented a new energy-efficient processor, Microsoft included in Windows controls power processor,
and Asus is packaged in a notebook, but not very successfully.

IHMO, Asus engineers have made a mistake in the design of the motherboard, but they are not recognized.

The ideal solution would be to get a new model of the motherboard from Asus, but it is not realistic.
Therefore, we will correct the problem by means Microsoft (Windows 7).

1. We have to change the registry.
Typing in the command line "regedit", you go to the registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Power \ PowerSettings \ 54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00 \ 5d76a2ca-e8c0-402f-a133-2158492d58ad

2. Included option in this branch will enable and disable the idle processor. In this case, it should be included.
To enable one or another hidden parameter, it is necessary to find and edit the value DWORD, changing its value SettingValue from 1 to 0.

3. Then, through the control panel - power - in the settings mode select power management processor.
There will be an option disabling idle processor and high pitched noise immediately disappears.

For the love of god, do not buy a mac.

edit: For some reason, the UL80JT-A2, which is a newer model, is like $200 cheaper <_< Definitely worth $650 imo
http://www.amazon.com/UL80JT-A2-Ligh...7886047&sr=1-6

[Amastacia]

Straight from a battery life perspective, Macs are amongst the best.

But I'm sitting here typing on mine and recommending you don't buy one.

You pay too much for middle-of-the-road parts in a distinctive case, and a kind of crappy OS built on top of good bones (work paid for mine, I didn't and wouldn't).

There are 3 reasons Macs get such amazing battery life, and 2 are not good things.

1) The battery isn't user-serviceable. On the upside, they can forgo the hardware necessary to make the battery easily replaceable and make the actual battery bigger. On the downside, you can't replace it without taking it to an Apple store and paying them out the nose to do it for you.

2) The battery is lithium polymer, which has higher energy density. This is the only good thing about the Mac battery life. Lithium polymer batteries are a little more expensive, but otherwise awesome.

3) The OS implements graphics card switching between the integrated Intel chip and the discrete nVidia chip in a very unusual way. What this means is that the Mac is NOT an Optimus laptop, and if you want to put a useful OS like Windows 7 on it, you will be plagued with terrible battery life since it won't be able to turn off the nVidia chip. The switching is only accomplished under OS-X with special drivers, triggered by opening applications which rely on certain graphics libraries. It's a very slick solution for OS-X, but completely useless otherwise. And frankly, the best part about an x86 Mac is that you can run Windows on it natively.

[Rellikard]

Just the new MacBook Airs have horrible battery life but the regular MacBooks and MacBook Pros have good battery life.

[Boyiee]

My M11x c2d gets insane battery life. 5hours usually for classes.

As long as you stay away from quads you should be ok.

[xerodok]

Just the new MacBook Airs have horrible battery life but the regular MacBooks and MacBook Pros have good battery life.

I guess they have to make up for all the other gimped specs?

[sruon]

Asus EEEPC with a 6+ cells battery

[Blabj]

but the regular MacBooks and MacBook Pros have good battery life.

Until a certain point, mine (MBP Late '08) can't hold a charge for much longer than an hour with every single energy saving technique, just running a couple of web pages in chrome. It's depressing.

[shukudai]

Those Asus, not the netbook ones, don't look too bad and pretty well priced. I heard their battery life quotes were a bit high. It was explained to me that power saving features on PCs are not too good, because MS can't account for the wildly different pieces of hardware that'll go into each machine.

[Blabj]

It's a lot to do with how you use the computer as well. Turning off/removing devices that you aren't going to use will stop them from leeching juice, such as bluetooth, webcams etc. No mega multi tasking, closing tabs you are no longer reading... They have just as much to do with how long the battery will last.

[Julian]

I still own an original UL80VT, which was the first laptop in this series, and I still get 4~6 hours of watching video or playing games, 6~8ish hours of normal use with bright screen, and I do get between 9~12 hours when on the most conservative settings.

did you even read my post shuk </3

edit: owned it for about.. 1.5 years now i think?

[shukudai]

I read it! Tho I didn't realize it was you, wtf's up with that avatar =P

[shukudai]

It's a lot to do with how you use the computer as well. Turning off/removing devices that you aren't going to use will stop them from leeching juice, such as bluetooth, webcams etc. No mega multi tasking, closing tabs you are no longer reading... They have just as much to do with how long the battery will last.

Side note here, is there ways to customize the browsing part? I know Firefox is a resource hog, are there things I can do to make it less of one? Bluetooth, webcam, etc, woud always be turned off, but i'll admit I will have like 82 tabs open in Firefox, and Trillian with 5-10 tabs at any given time ._.

[Senji]

Please do not buy a Macbook Air.

I currently use an ASUS EeePC for work and personal use. You can probably stretch about 4 or 5 hours out of the battery life with a good power saver mode profile. They're great for everything you had mentioned you'd be using it for above.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Id=1&name=ASUS

They have dual core ones now that are even more badass and are generally the same size.

Those Asus, not the netbook ones, don't look too bad and pretty well priced. I heard their battery life quotes were a bit high. It was explained to me that power saving features on PCs are not too good, because MS can't account for the wildly different pieces of hardware that'll go into each machine.

Side note here, is there ways to customize the browsing part? I know Firefox is a resource hog, are there things I can do to make it less of one? Bluetooth, webcam, etc, woud always be turned off, but i'll admit I will have like 82 tabs open in Firefox, and Trillian with 5-10 tabs at any given time ._.

Posted a tidbit in Omni's thread, but after I deleted a bunch of the bloatware it increased the battery life a lot. The screen can get pretty bright so I wanted lower it anyways, and it has a dual OS boot mode where you can pick between full windows or a barebones word processing/internet. With all that stuff added up the battery life skyrocketed.

[Blabj]

Chrome is pretty decent with memory usage, but to be honest any browser with too many tabs open is going to be a problem to battery life. Better to change your browsing style, such as making temporary bookmarks folders or increasing the size of your history and using that if you wish to get back to a page.

[Luna Flower]

Personally unless your just browsing the internet all battery life for any laptop sucks.... Mine only lasts an hour and a half.... I have an ASUS G60vx.

[Boyiee]

Like I said, I get 5hours or more doing classwork (notes, browsing web etc) in school on my m11x core2duo. I have the backlighting off and the screen brightness on stupid low, but this way no one else can see what I'm doing on the interwebs.

[Minions]

I've always gone with a netbook for the tasks you listed. I bought a EEEPC with around 9 hours~ or so battery life. Love never having to charge the thing.

[sav]

Toshiba portege!