New Toshiba laptop buyer, very concerned about battery life

I had no clue on what to get for my first laptop. I was going to get an hp because it was in my price range <$700 or a refurbished dell. Our tech guy at work said stay away from hp and the other option might be a Toshiba. So, I had found the P205D-S7802 at best buy for $649, woo hoo!!!

So far I love it, it seems durable, not too crazy about vista but I can deal but the one thing I am concerned about is the battery life. Last night was the first night I could play with it and it was charged at 100% and within 45 minutes it was down to 50%! Not that I will do a lot of moving around with it but that does concern me, I figured it would last me a couple hours. I've tried putting it in power saver mode and the computer is a lot slower.

Also, what bloatware can I delete that won't cause a problem. So far I took off napster and their spyware removal (since you had to buy it).

Thanks so much!!!

 

The only software you need to keep are the OS and the Toshiba Utiities (to access the F key functionality)

Battery life.. ugghh. YOu should get better than that. I usually get between 1.5 and 2 hours running on power saver mode.

 

I've tried the power saver mode and it is really slow in my opinon, did you tweak it or anything?

 

Nope - Straight out of the box - Though I don't use the Toshiba power saver software - Just Vista

 

Power Saver mode seems to be worthless in my opinion unless you are doing relatively passive work on your computer. I just went on a trip to Hawaii and tried to watch a dvd on my laptop.... i was in power saver mode with the screen dimmed as far as i could stand... but only got about an hour or so out of my battery. Keeping in mind my GPUs certainly use more power than your model, i still dont think that power saver is all that useful if battery power is a huge issue i would suggest the purchase of a second battery.

 

A new battery need a few charges and discharges to reach its full capacity/potential.

 

Is there a certain way to do that? Should I let it drain all the way out and then plug it back in?

 

Ya, just drain it down to ~5% and charge it back up.

 

great, thanks!