mooo

I am looking at laptops right now..
I was looking at a p4 but a friend told me that getting a p4 laptop the life span is horried, about 2hours if i am lucky and he told me to get the mobile centrino where it last about 4hours. Is there a website i can look and see the battery life and or any input would be great

Henyman

my 2.8 P4 lasts 4+ hours

it runs underclocked to ~1.5 in low power mode to extend battery, still more than fast enough for browsing web etc. takes 2 clicks to put in on full power mode

that said the centrino chips last even longer due to lower power usage, but tend to cost a bit more

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NetRyder

Tha battery life is also obviously determined by the capacity of the battery itself, which is why some P4-based notebooks might even have better battery life than Pentium-M machines with smaller batteries. That also means the P-M machines are smaller and lighter, but such models usually come with higher capacity batteries as well. With that said, most Pentium-M based machines that are sold today will almost always have better battery life and will be thinner and lighter than P4-based systems.

Bear in mind that there are notebooks with P4 CPUs as well as P4-M (not Pentium-M) CPU's and there's a difference between those two as well. P4-M CPU's have SpeedStepping, which means the clock speed fluctuates depending on the kind of task the machine is working on and the power-saving settings in effect.

Basically, as far as battery life and size/thickness goes:
Pentium-M > Pentium 4-M > Pentium 4

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madmatt

I have a 4lbs. Sony Vaio notebook and I'm lucky to get three hours out of it. I am running a brand new Pentium M chip. Granted I have a huge HDD, 1GB of RAM, and a Nvidia graphics card. So keep in mind, the more you are running the less your battery life is going to be. I could turn this notebook on and leave it sitting idle and it would last five hours.

But, it's 4lbs. which is great for business and traveling.

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mooo

Well here is what i am looking at as of right now.
Display
15" SXGA Screen 1400x1050
Processor
Intel Pentium M 740 1.73GHz 533MHz FSB
Ram
1024MB PC2700 DDR333 (2x512)
Exterior Finish
Standard Finish Standard Finish
Video Card
256MB PCI-Express ATI X700
Primary Hard Drive
80GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
Bay 1 Media Drive
8X DVD +/- R/RW /CDRW Dual Layer Combo Drive
Modem
56K RJ11 Phone Modem 56K RJ11 Phone Modem
Network Card
10/100/1000 NIC 10/100/1000 NIC
Camera
Integrated Digital Video Camera Integrated Digital Video Camera
Battery
12 Cell Battery 12 Cell Battery
Wireless Network
Internal 802.11G WIFI Internal 802.11G WIFI
Warranty
2 Year Warranty w/ Accidental LCD Damage Protection (24/7)


If i were playing a movie or playing UT or WOW, how long do you think the life would be?

madmatt

Another thing to consider, the larger the LCD the more it's going to suck up. I have a 13.3 widescreen with XBrite Technology (supposed to be brighter and better quality than normal).

It's very difficult to judge how long your battery will last. That is a powerful notebook.

The nice thing about today's notebooks is that some include software that allow you to watch a DVD or listen to music without having to boot Windows.

Playing a game on the other hand would be a big performance hit and would likely suck up power.

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Henyman

for playing games you would want to plug in the mains

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madmatt

Also, it is worth noting that a notebook may peform slower because the way the Pentium M is designed when on battery power.

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tibboh

Bought a Toishiba laptop (P4) last year for daughter.

Have just bought 2 similar spec toshibas a few months ago and both with Centrino chip and they knock the socks off the P4 in speed and battery power.

Pay the wee bit extra and u will not be disappointed

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Ferral_Imp

It'd probably be safe to guess that it'd last about half as long as the max battery life quoted in the system description. The more cpu/graphics intensive what you're doing on the laptop is the shorter the battery life is.

I'd personally advise you to go with a P-M over a P4 system if your main concern is battery life and you're going to be mainly playing games and web surfing.

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