E6400 battery life compare to 2 video cards

You should consider heat and noise besides battery life. The Nvidia graphics system makes the laptop much warmer and the fan turns on a lot more. So unless you game, the Intel solution is much better IMO. It is nice to have the back-lit keyboard, though.

Sounds like you are buying from the Outlet. I would look for a system with Intel graphics, WXGA+, and backlit keyboard. Almost everything else is easy to replace. In a year or less, you will want a SSD instead of a mechanical hard drive.

 

I did not find any good system with Intel graphics.
Does the Nvidia graphics make the system so noisy and warm?

I can live with the battery life issue.
but noise and heat are not acceptable.

 

Coming from someone who's owned both an Nvidia and Intel E6400, it's definitely warmER and noisiER with the Nvidia GPU, but not absolutely hot or loud. For the most part, it's not that the fan runs faster with the Nvidia GPU, just a lot more often. That being said, as I don't game, I definitely prefer my Intel system.

 

My Nvidia system doesn't turn the fan at all when doing normal office stuff. Only when I work with MATLAB (number crunching), play games or watch videos does the fan come on, and it's barely audible anyway at the slow speed. The fast speed is quite audible but only comes on for games.

 

Thanks all.
Finally I got a E6400 P8400 with Intel graphics.
Back-lit Keyboard 9 Cell Primary Battery 14.1 inch UltraSharp WXGA+
and other goodies

 

That's close to what I am using right now. You will like it.

 

Enjoy! Let us know if you like it

 

I definitely will.
Is There any visible performance boost using 4 GB memory with Win 7 64 bit in compare to 2 GB?

 

Depends. For general usage (office, firefox/IE, mail) and the odd game 2 GB should suffice. For professional applications it varies a lot.

I use MATLAB and 4 GB is still not optimal (10 GB would be great).

 

The system is fro general usage + watching HD movies + programming
on different operating systems.

and is there any visible performance gap between P8400 and P8600 for the usage I'm planning for the system?

Thanks