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    Question on upgrading for battery life

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by KerryB, Jun 10, 2006.

  1. KerryB

    KerryB Notebook Enthusiast

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    I have an Acer 3003 LCi with the Sempron in it. I have seen a few articles on replacing the Sempron with the Turion MT series. It doesn't seem that bad and it looks doable. My main concern with this system is battery life. Performance is a distant second. Right now with no upgrades from the 512mb ram, 4 cell battery, and the sempron I get roughly 45 min to an hour of battery life. The biggest batter I have seen will only double the battery capacity.

    My question is this. Will upgrading the processor to the Turion give me better battery life? After I add Ram and a bigger battery, is it really worth it to upgrade this laptop?
     
  2. ejl

    ejl fudge

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    it shouldn't give you better battery life....the turion is a more powerful processor, so it would use more power than the sempron. it is different in the case of the celerons. since they don't have speed step (stepping down cpu speed for less intensive operations), they tend to be less efficient then the pentium m.
     
  3. Charles P. Jefferies

    Charles P. Jefferies Lead Moderator Super Moderator

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    The best way to improve your battery life would be to get a bigger battery - see if you can find six- or eight-cell batteries for that notebook, I believe they are available. Four-cell batteries are horrible for battery life.

    If you're not concerned about performance, I wouldn't worry about the processor upgrade. The Sempron is a fairly quick processor and isn't hard on the battery. It would get similar life to the Turion.
     
  4. djpharoah

    djpharoah Notebook Evangelist

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    check ebay for additional 6/8/12 cell batteries. Thats often a good way to give a notebook a quick boost.