Battery Upgrade

Hello all, my first post here

At the moment i have a Toshiba L-20, has the 1.4 Celeron-m 768mb ram and an x200 display chip. The laptop at the moment is really good, does everything i want, uni work, programming and a bit of retro gaming that i love. At the moment though im using the laptop pretty much as a desktop replacement, the reason being that the battery only lasts between 45 - 90 minutes max. This limits the places i can use it at uni, as i either need to sit in the back corner near the power point or have it off 90% of the day.

Option 1)

I was either thinking of getting a new laptop and spending ~ $1500 - $2000 (Australian Dollars) for something that would last at least 3 hours, hoping for 4.

Option 2)

Alternatively i was thinking about getting something that would last long in this laptop (as it currently does everything i want it do, minus battery life). I was thinking about replacing the Celeron M 360 (1.4) with a Pentium M 1.4 equiv, as this would increase battery life a bit and the fan wouldn't come on as much, GO SPEED STEP . I can easily do this myself and from what i've read it fits straight in as there is a Pentium-m version of this laptop

Also thinking of getting a universal power supply. At the moment my battery is 2000mAh and 14.4V so thats 28.8W, something thats 60W or more would be good, but i cant seem to find any that would fit my laptop. Something that would fit under the laptop or stick to it somewhere instead of having to be dragged around would be good.

I'm aiming to get 4hours running time off this laptop for under $500 AUS if possible

Has anyone used this sort of battery before ???
Any websites that sell them i wouldn't mind buying one online!!
Any help / suggestions would be greatly appreciated thanks!

 

If you plan on going this route then wait until the end of May/June to buy because you'll be able to get a notebook based on Intel's new Santa Rosa platform.
Since your current laptop works fine I wouldn't upgrade just yet. Only buy when you need to.

That's not a bad idea, but that's all dependent on price. How much can you get the Pentium for?

I'd suggest looking into an external battery.

 

I can get a pentium-m 730 (1.6) fromoff ebay from a reliable power seller for under $100 AUS. Its rated at 27W and my cely is 21W but with speedstep this shouldnt matter too much.

Also i found out there is a 4300mAh battery on 14.8 volts for other L20's. Thats 62Watts compared to my batteries 28.8. I couldnt find it from the thoshiba website, but i might be able to find it from an aftermarket seller, but i want it to have japanese cells not some cheap knock off korean or something.

If i can get both these upgrades hopfully the thing will last 3-4 hours.

The only thing that im concerned with is that im not quite sure if the BIOS will accept a pentium-m, it will fit though!! I might try call up toshiba today and see if they say it can be done.

 

Called up Toshiba and the guy said the CPU is soldered to the motherboard for my model..... think i might try and remove the CPU just to check..... hope he's wrong

 

Just opened the thing up and the CPU isn't soldered to the motherboard like the guy from the callcentre said it would be.... Lucky comes straight out, think i will be ordering that CPU now

 

Just ordered a Pentium-m 730 (1.6)

Its a Dothan core and 90nm CPU so it should work.
Only problem is that it runs at 533FSB and my Celeron-m runs at 400FSB.

Should have bought a 725 which is 400FSB, oh well, was under $100 AUS for the processor and if it doesn't work i could always re-sell it somewhere.

Although there are other laptops with the same motherboard ATI Express 200M and Pentium m's like this one -- > http://www.techforless.com/cgi-bin/tech4less/18445GU?mv_pc=bizrate#specs