Why Should You Wait for Refreshes? Montevina Battery Life 9.6 Hours

Just popped onto engadget today and learned about the new T200 thinkpads. Though it has nothing to do with any Dell refreshes, it does help give you a reason as to why you might want to wait for them and their potential benefits.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/08/details-surface-for-future-thinkpads-x200-sl-t-and-r-series/

Of course the rig is not out yet, but in terms of specs, the thing that stuck out most to me:

9.6-hours of battery life on the 9-cell pack

Very sick especially with Montevina Penryn Core 2 Processors and options for discreet gfx coupled with 320GB hard drive.

Intel did mention a few weeks ago that Montevina was going to be able to play a 2.5 hour Blu Ray disc movie and still have plenty of time left over to do other stuff, but I never expected this much.

 

9.6 hrs?? I will believe it when I see it What good is this value if this is when the notebook is run at minimal power, with LCD at lowest setting, no Wifi, no BT, etc. Kind of defeats the purpose of having a notebook.

Also, remember this is for a 12" LCD. Nothing you or I would want

Cheers

 

9.6 hours is kind of hard to getprobaly with a weak dedicated grahics card and wins 2000 (for low resources)

 

9.6 hours with a normal voltage cpu is unbelievable. it might be on some big underclocks to achieve that. still amazing though!
I'm concerned about the price though, ddr3 is very expensive.

 

and it appears that they got rid of the standard screens completely, they will regret it!

 

congrats on 1000th post!

 

thanks i thought no one will realize

 

possible with a really hot 9 cell battery sticking out the back of the tiny thing.

and integrated GM950 graphics, ULV processors (or atom), weak 12" screen, 2 GB ram, 5400 RPM 20GB hard drive

 

If you read the article, you will find it has a normal voltage proc and a ssd, intel 4500 IGP.

 

9.6 hours is very long. I don't belive it

 

You won't get anywhere close to 9 hours with discreet graphics.

 

I bet when it's on a 6 cell battery and running stuff on full blast it only goes a little bit better than the current ones

 

So hay guys hear the news? Pentium 4's will be able to get 5-10 GHz clocks!

Don't believe everything you hear.

 

I am happy with 4 hours on my 12 inch powerbook.

 

I could see it on a newer greener tech with the power saving tech of vista. That with high underclocks why not? Hell I have a notebook from 2005 that gets 5 hours of battery life sometimes slightly less or more and thats on not only older tech but an 8 cell battery. Easily believable to me.

 

There's always going to be a reason to wait a few more months. Unless you need to use your laptop away from a power source for more than three hours on a regular basis this isn't the huge benefit it initially sounds like it is. I mean, it's impressive, but if you're primarily plugged in or only use your laptop for a couple hours at a time it's not going to make an appreciable difference in how you use the machine.

And somehow, no matter how much computers advance, no matter how much battery technology progresses or how energy efficient laptop components become, it always seems to even out around three or so hours anyway. I'd take this with a grain of salt.