Model with best battery life (student)

Hi,

What is the best Dell laptop for longest battery life? Portability is important and this would be mostly for web browsing/word.

Thanks

 

I mean... how much are you willing to sacrifice for runtime? A couple years ago they advertised that an E6400 could get 20 hours (or something silly like that) with a 9 Cell and slice, but at that point it would weigh as much as a DTR.

On the flip side, the old Vostro V13/Latitude 13 uses less power, weighs less, but since it only comes with a 4-Cell, you'll never get more than 3-4 hours of juice...

 

Haha yeah, going with a slice option would crank the weight up too high... I know there is the upcoming Thinkpad X220 that supposedly has good battery life. I am currently waiting for Thinkpad E420s/E220s reviews. The thing is, I like the design of Dell business laptops.

MBA is also nice, but I am not a big fan of OS X.

 

Take a look at Win7 Pro on a E6420, 6-cell, backlit KB, 1600x900, BT for a mouse, Intel WiFi. Go down from there.

GK

 

Web and word processing... you may want to look at their netbook line. Dual Core Atom would be more than enough for that and you can easily get 7+ hours out of that. Not to mention, you can carry spare batteries with you and they are pretty cheap.

 

I would consider a netbook but I would want one with the best keyboard possible. I have one of the first HP Mini model and it's not great for typing.

 

Take a look at 13" models - it is the smallest size with a full-size keyboard (the business-level 12" like E4200/E6220 are close but not quite) and have option of full-power or low power processor. Avoid older D-series models; older processors and lack of LED backlit will both hurt battery life (at least unless you are willing to run the screen very dim.)

I'm not sure if the Vostro 1320 has an option of LED-backlit screen; Vostro 3300 certainly does, as do the E4300/E4310. E4300/E4310 only go up to 6-cell battery, Vostro 3300 goes to 8-cell and is still a very light/small machine and pretty long lasting battery.

For E4310/Vostro 3300, it's best to get an i5 rather than i3 processor; there's no turbo on the i3 and it is actually more power efficient to do the occasional CPU-intensive task quickly (turbo up and get it done) rather than take longer at maximum non-turbo speed.

Vostro 3300 has good pricing new, E4300/E4310 only good pricing via the Outlet right now. E4310 also has a 6-cell slice option.

(Back in the day, my favorite were C-series with dual batteries and the optical swapped out. Battery life on P4-based C640 wasn't good but the 6-cells were small and with two of them when the first ran out I could swap in another without shutting down... 3 batteries would get through long day of classes.)
Avoid i3 models (no turbo = higher average clocks, worse batteries)