Dell Mini 9 and Lenovo S10 Battery Life?

What is the battery life of the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 (4-cell) and Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (3-cell)? NotebookReview claims they both have around 3:45 hours of battery life, however every other site I've visited claims the S10 has a life of around 2 hours, sometimes even lower.

It'd be greatly appreciated if you specified battery life during standby, idle, normal usage, and/or 100% usage.

How do these two netbooks' batteries compare? It would be nice if there was a side-by-side comparison of each battery life.

 

I get about 2-hours out of my Lenovo s10 with the 3-cell battery, Lenovo has a 6-cell battery for the s10 now for [email protected].

I saw the 3+ hours on the review also, I don't know where that came from, even with brightness all the way down and power saver mode its in the 2 hour zone.

 

Thank god it's not just my Aspire One getting poopy battery life. Lenovo normally gets oodles...

Sorry I can't tell you much about those two's battery because I've never even seen the S10 and haven't used a mini 9.

 

Ach Lenovo sells the 6-cell in accessories for 129 and 3-cell for 109, but there's no upgrade option when buying the S10 for +$20, let alone having an upgrade option at all.

 

Jmna, how do you feel about 2 hours of battery life? It seems a bit short, although I am not sure.

 

According to some I9 (Mini) owners who have posted in the Inspiron 9 thread....Most have been getting between 3.5 to 4 hours on the I9's batt'

Mine is arriving on Thursday, so after I do some tweaking and fine tuning..I can also advise!

Hope that helps!


Cin

 

Nice, what are some of the tweaks you may do?

 

I will be removing Dell's new ownership present of preinstalled Bloatware! LOL

And, adding some ram..and possibly dual booting Ubuntu and XP

Making it mine, and how I like it!

(Ive been waiting for a very long time for Dell to finally release the I9 in other colors than Black and white)

Which one are you leaning towards???

Cin

 

meh, more would be nice of course. I'll probably purchase the 6 cell in the future. But, on the bright side, it draws such little power, a cigarette lighter adapter will do wonders.

Also, even though it comes standard with 3 cell, I must say the build quality of the netbook top notch, i'm really impressed from that standpoint.

It's also the only netbook with an Express Port for a HSDPA modem, which was the deciding factor for me.

Some newer netbooks come with integrated HSDPA, which is also cool, but not when it comes to switching laptops fast. My opinion anyways.

 

Dont waste your money on the dell mini. Its a failed product due to ultra slow SSD drives Dell uses.

 

Oh really??? Do you own one and have seen this for yourself?? Just curious.

Cin

 

While the ssd is slow, it does get decent battery life. Cin is right. From our test units, that is about the right time for usage.

 

All netbooks that has SSD hard drives that don't utilize the standard 2.5" SATA interface will have slow read/write speeds. This is the same as the Asus EeePCs with built-in SSD HDDs.

 

It has nothing to do with SATA interface. All of the cheap-o SSD drives use crap cells hence the laughable speeds. The Dell mini is a failed product. Its one of the least desired netbooks on the market.

 

Okay umm I just found out from a Lenovo representative that the S10 has integrated battery (which gets around 2 hours) and the 3/6-cell batteries they sell are only for the S10e which isn't for public purchase. Even though the Lenovo may be the best netbook, it would be more of a failed product because everything about netbooks is based on portability and energy efficiency. Therefore, a netbook with substandard integrated battery would render it unefficient/not portable as it would last only two hours.

As for the Dell, what are its read and write speeds?

 

Question..again..Do you own a Mini 9???
If it is one of the least desired netbooks on the market..I ask why are the recent orders being delayed again??? According to Dell..for the Christmas Holiday...the I9 has been a top seller. That is why my order is delayed until 12/19.


Cin.

 

Please don't start a flame war by passing opinions as facts.
Firstly, slow SSD doesn't equate to a "failed product". If that is the case, then the widely popular and SUCCESSFUL Asus EeePCs would also be a "failed product" in your eyes too.

See here:
http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/asus-eee-pc-ssd-read-and-write-tests.html
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=31344

You are half correct when you say the SSD used are cheap; half wrong because they are not really "drives", but instead, memory chips built-in on the motherboard. All netbook manufacturers that advertise SSD hard drive use these "cheap" memory chips to keep costs down.

 

I don't know what the battery life of the Dell mini 9 or Lenovo S10 is, but I can tell you my Samsung NC10 gets over 6 hours without any tweaks. That's on the standard 6 cell battery.

People have reported 7 hours with Vista.

 

This is wrong. The S10 and S10e use the same batteries and AC adapters. The person who gave you this info is incorrect. You can buy a 6cell from lenovo.com and use it in you S10 guaranteed.

DD

 

I see, it's surprising that someone who works at Lenovo would get this information wrong. Also, the Samsung looks to be quite energy efficient. A 6-cell Lenovo would only theoretically get 4-5 hours of battery life...

 

I find it crazy that hard drive based netbooks get as good battery life as my 901 which has ssd's. Why?

 

This is because SSD's are always drawing a certain amount of power, which is usually more than what a mechanical drive idles at.

I wouldnt worry about it too much, cause your SSD is faster than the mechanical drives.

K-TRON

 

to the guy who said it's a failed product because it uses slow SSDs. you can easily upgrade the ssd in the mini 9 with a Runcore SSD. or a buffalo. both companies make upgrade ssds for the mini 9

 

The Inspiron Mini 9 is configured with, and has never shipped with anything but, 32WH batteries. A third-party test software program being used in the field doesn't properly program every vendor's battery to report power (versus current) capabilities, and so the utility is not properly reporting the actual battery capacity. We have confirmed this and all packs are 4-cell 32Whr, and will deliver more than 4 hours of battery life in typical usage.