Gateway P-6831FX: Battery Life

Hey all, I'll be entering my freshman year of college next year and this laptop has really caught my attention. I love playing games and obviously this computer can handle my gaming. One concern is that I will also need the laptop for classes to take notes and whatnot. How is the battery life on this sucker? I know gaming laptops tend to have poor battery life but when in class I will probably just have Word and Wifi on- no games. Do you think I could get 3 hours out of this laptop? Also does Best Buy sell larger batteries with longer life?

 

You wont get 3 hrs... Buy a 2nd battery and you should be covered.

You wll get closer to 2 - 2.5 hrs

The battery that comes with the laptop is a 9 cell and I know of no 12 cell battery option. Just get a second battery especially since they are now on sale so the cost of the second battery is mostly covered

 

Hmm- I never thought of that. That's a pretty good idea. I have never owned a laptop before- can you just swap out the batteries with no problem?

 

I managed to get little more then 3hours while on battery. FX wasn't doing much, didn't go sleep either, just reading forums on the net and mild graphical display. Had Everest opened to see what wattage it was consuming;

Total Battery power in mwh ~ 82000
avg consumption in mwh ~ 25000

Got the 10% reminder after 3rd hour. Shut her down in fear of under voltaging it and in went in the charger.

Mind you, when gaming and 3Dmark06ing, consumption rose to 80000mwh.

 

i'm the same as you,going to college next year.
right now i'm debating wheather to get this FX, or the XPS 1530. this is a 17in. laptop so its going to be pretty big, but it is also the same price as the 1530 that i configured; except that the FX is more powerful. i'm so confused on what to get...

 

Yeah it's between this, the xps 1530, and black macbook for me.

 

Here is my advice. Gateway plus a cheap Asus EEE to take notes. Might be a bit more, but you do not want to lug around a 8-9LBS 17inch monster.

 

But isnt the size of the keyboard and screen too small to take note on?
Cause my friend have a 13" laptop and she always presses the wrong key or something

 

I've decided to pass entirely on this laptop. Thank you all!

 

I am currently using this laptop at college, and I love it. It has plenty of power and space to run every simulation and modeling application I need, and the battery life is better than almost every hp/dell Ive used, assuming im not playing ut3 ofcourse But then again, thats the great part. If you get all of your hw finished for the day, and have some downtime before the next class, you can fire up ANY game you want, connect to the local wifi, and play online as if you were at home. Its a great feeling to be able to do this. I personally think its worth the extra size/weight, but some people may have huge distances to carry this thing.

 

the Dell XPS m1530 is about 5-6 lbs already. is the 2 extra lbs. really noticeable, i mean, i am a pretty big guy, i don't think it will affect me much. in the back pack it should be no problem.

 

do you think it's hard to carry around for 10mins??

 

yea personally I hate carrying heavy loads but then Gateway has their ways to control your minds..lol you know what I mean ; )