Just HOW Mobile is your 6100 Series

Just how mobile are you really with your 6100 series laptop??

I have the 6130-HS2 and have posted many time with questions and even had my review posted here. In the end, I find I am not mobile at all. Three factors keep me from truly enjoying the benefits of this laptop.

1. Battery Life - or the lack of it. If I am lucky I can get an hour out of it. That is rather frustrating. Pile on top of that 100 bucks for another battery that will only last the same, how mobile is that?
2. Heat - I have yet to use this laptop without the cooling pad. It just gets to hot?! How hot is too hot? That I do not know. I know the Hard Drive temp is running an average of 105deg doing normal everyday tasks. Not gaming. That just seems to warm to me. Between the heat and the battery, I find it never leaves the desk!

3. Preformance - It just does not preform to my expectations for a P4 3Ghz. Multitasking is hit or mis. Mind you this is plugged in not on battery! Quite honestly it feels no better than my old AMD 1800+. Suggestions? aside from hardware upgrades. It has locked up 3 seperate times since I had it too. Maybe I am just nitpicking? Does anyone else have these sort of issues? What did you do for preformance?

I really an trying to love this laptop but it gets hard as the days go on.

 

Well, heres my two cents on your three points:

1) The battery life IS pretty pathic. I too have 2 battery packs, which does effect point #3. But, I knew this was going to be the case, and am not supprised by this. I take my 6130 to work and school daily. And granted, it's best for me to locate a outlet to work for an extended period of time, I find that personally it allows me to take a break from school/ work.

2) I've run a few initial thermal tests via software and find that even though the HD gets warm, and so does the proc of course, it's nothing that worrysome (i dont have specs at time of post). I dont use it on my lap because of typing comfort, so it spends its time on my des or table. I am going to invest in a small fan set ( Spire PacificBreeze $23 http://www.frozencpu.com/lap-08.html) just to help extend the cooling. But really a non issue.

3) Every single coworker or classmate (except for a stubborn few) are fully impressed by this rigs proformance. I have upgraded to a gig of RAM and will shortly remove the only true bottleneck of this series...the harddrive (which would likely help issue 2)! I have run Sysoft Sandra benchmarks between the 6130 and my AMD 2500 desktop (same amnt of memory and proc OCed) and the 6130 comes out on top except for video proformance...but thats not compairable.
And, it's NEVER locked up unless some software programe is taking a dump.

My only wish is that I could find a way to upgrade the stock fans with something that has better cfm.

Cheers!

 

Well, heres my two cents on your three points:

1) The battery life IS pretty pathic. I too have 2 battery packs, which does effect point #3. But, I knew this was going to be the case, and am not supprised by this. I take my 6130 to work and school daily. And granted, it's best for me to locate a outlet to work for an extended period of time, I find that personally it allows me to take a break from school/ work.

2) I've run a few initial thermal tests via software and find that even though the HD gets warm, and so does the proc of course, it's nothing that worrysome (i dont have specs at time of post). I dont use it on my lap because of typing comfort, so it spends its time on my des or table. I am going to invest in a small fan set ( Spire PacificBreeze $23 http://www.frozencpu.com/lap-08.html) just to help extend the cooling. But really a non issue.

3) Every single coworker or classmate (except for a stubborn few) are fully impressed by this rigs proformance. I have upgraded to a gig of RAM and will shortly remove the only true bottleneck of this series...the harddrive (which would likely help issue 2)! I have run Sysoft Sandra benchmarks between the 6130 and my AMD 2500 desktop (same amnt of memory and proc OCed) and the 6130 comes out on top except for video proformance...but thats not compairable.
And, it's NEVER locked up unless some software programe is taking a dump.

My only wish is that I could find a way to upgrade the stock fans with something that has better cfm.

Cheers!

 

The battery life is really pathetic, but I never use the battery for more than 1 hour, so I'd rather pay for performance than battery ... in my case

performance is real good, I've replaced my desktop ahtlon 2100+ 256mb ram geforce 3 64mb with the 6130h ... I use 200go of HD on a separate networked comp = A+

 

Sorry about the double post....I didnt think I submitted that twice

 

Well, I have been running it without the coolign pad non-stop now and while the temp reads anywhere from 105-118 (runs cooler on battery only) The proc. has not seemed any hotter, just the hard driver area, but not any more noticeable than it was before? Strange.
The HD Issue - I have decided to hold off as not to void the warrenty as I almost never play games and it is OK when I do with the current HD. I also am curious as to how the 7200 drive will increase or decrease the heat situation in the hard drive compartment.
One thing I have noticed is the pcmcia is right over the hard drive and being that I dont use any pcmcia devices I pulled out the little place holder hoping to add to the airflow over the hard drive. Nada. I put it back in as it didn't seem to make any difference and why have another place for dust to enter the system.
While I do love this laptop, being that I almost never play games I think I will be selling it to get something smaller and mroe battery friendly and mobile. I use the word THINK as it is hard to give up ALL the specs this thing has. Anyone else have this debate with themselves?

 

My concern came before the purchase..but was quickly washed away once recieved. It keep up with the Dell's, Emach's and HPs of my peers...and i still had coins left...alot of them!

 

Yea, Its a great little machine.

I'm just stuck on the whole battery life thing now. Ugh. Never happy. BUT You simply can NOT beat this thing for the price and yea, plugged in, I can keep up with anyone lol[} ]