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My wife has the 2920 and I think it's great. The battery is very good and it can last easily more than two hours for DVDs and an hour more for surfing wirelessly or word processing, I think . The 2930 is the vitrually the same with the 2920 so I presume the battery will be at the same level. But we got ours only £400 (T7300 (2 cores at 2Ghz with 4MB L2 cache), 250GB HD, 2GB RAM, intergrated GPU X3100, 100grams lighter than the 2930) where the 2930 is at least £515 with similar specifications. I guess the difference in price is because 2930 is a new design.
The shop we got ours is
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_2920_Laptop_LX.ANK0X.239/version.asp?PID=946 You can check the specifications for 2930 there as well.
My wife is very happy with it since she wanted something small, light and quick like my laptop. She loved netbooks but I had them out of the question since they are very slaggy and the only thing they will be adequate for is surfing and email. So this 2920 can do anything a big one can (Windows Office applications, watching HD movies, photoshop, skype, even playing world of warcraft) except playing the latest games (even though I saw someone playing Call of Duty 4 in youtube). The screen is very pleasant and everthing looks sharp and crisp. The resolution, which is the same as my 15.4 laptop has, is the best for the size. It made me believe that my laptop needs higher resolution for its size. The speakers are very good as well so you can watch a movie easily, you won't have to plug extra speakers. The ports are adequate, 3 USBs, card reader, even though I would like to have an HDMI port (it has VGA at least).
To be honest I would love to have such a small laptop with this processing power but at this size and price you are compromized with the graphical power. The build quality is very good for my taste and my wife's (the only thing she looks at a laptop is its looks and how cute it is)
So 2920 is the small version of my 5920 but without the graphic card and similarly 2930 is the small version of 5930.
In my opinion, go for it although the price is still high compared to 2920. Just when you get it, unistall every 3rd party application that you won't need because it is blotted in software (like many laptops). When we got ours had 77 processes running and after I cleaned it, it has now 56 processes. My laptop has 42 processes. It makes a big difference in Vista.
Surprised at it to be honest - and so were a lot of friends at work. It's very "cute", a very nice size, although to be honest, when you've used a 15 inch for a while, going back to 12 inch takes a little while to get used to. I have to lean in a little closer to it than a 15 inch. The screen is very good though, colourful and sharp.
Battery life can go up to 3 hours on low power setting, although I just plug it in the mains.
Handles my old school games very well... Grand Prix 4 flies, as does UT 2003, Ghost Recon and Half Life. Havent tried any modern games yet. Gives a good sound too.
Keyboard is spot on, and overall it has a very nice finish to it.
On the whole, I'm considering getting one with a broadband deal from "The Link", but the HP DV5 1100 is also tempting me too...
Sorry I can't give any more info, but yeah it's real nice, and pretty much all laptops at this price range give the same battery life.
One thing i dont like is that I cant get the screen to go back far enough to get a good viewing angle at times. I'm 6'4, and so when it's on my lap, the screen is a bit washed out. But It's easy to work around and adjust your position, ie slouch!
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
