[ale] [OT] Laptop Battery Worth It?

[Pat Regan]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:29:35 -0400
David Tomaschik <david at systemoverlord.com> wrote:

> I can't imagine carrying around an 18.4" laptop.  With my current ~7lb
> laptop and all the accessories I carry, my laptop bag is 15+ lbs on a
> regular basis.  Adding another 3-4 lbs would not be a welcome change.

It depends on your definition of "carrying around."  Some people would
think of that as lugging the machine back and forth from work every
day.  My laptop usually stays "docked" at my desk until I go on a road
trip.

I also have a gigantor 18.4 inch laptop.  I also haven't had a desktop
for the last five years, either.  When I had both a desktop and a
laptop, I used to try to make sure all my DVCS repositories were synced
up and/or pushed out to my server (wifi and mobile data weren't as
ubiquitous back then).  I pretty regularly wished I had a (usually
large) file, application, or something from home when I wasn't there.
That never happens now.  My whole environment follows me this way.

My laptop isn't quite as beefy as Michael Trausch's desktop, but it
is at least playing the same sport.  It has an Intel 720qm processor (4
cores, 8 threads, 1.73 to 2.4 ghz), 8 gig of ram (laptop ram is quite
cheap now), an Intel X25-M SSD, a 320 gig 7200 RPM spinning drive, and
a Bluray reader / DVD burner.  It also has HDMI and VGA, so it spends
the majority of its time at my desk plugged into a pair of monitors.

I do not know how long it takes it to run through a 'make allmodconfig'
but I do know that I am surprised how much the current incarnation of
Hyperthreading speeds up kernel compilation :)

The battery life on this thing is quite poor.  I never got more than
about 2.5 hours on a charge, and I have the big, heavy, 8 cell
battery.  I've had this laptop for about a year and a half now and the
max runtime is down to about 2 hours now.  

> It would be nice if there was a site where you could compare laptops
> from all brands, filter by specs, sort by ratings, etc.  Even on
> Dell's site, it's a pain to find laptops with a particular resolution.

It has been more annoying that that, even.  Some manufacturers have
made it hard to find the actual resolution of the displays and they
just tell you things like WXGA and WXGA+ and whatnot.  Some of those
terms were poorly defined and applied to a small range of resolutions.

It has gotten a little easier now since all of the laptops I'd be
interested in list their displays as 1080p.

Pat