*Necessary* battery life?

[BVHeck]

Hey everyone this is my first post so bear with me here

I am currently looking for a good laptop for college. The campus is fully wireless and most of the class rooms have AC adaptors at the desks. Due to the latter fact I was wondering actually how often would one usually use their laptop off the plug.

I intend to play some games and I want to run Vista comfortably so I would be shooting for a T series thinkpad with 2GB of RAM, at least a 2GHz processor, and at least a GMA X3100.

Assuming I did buy T series w/ a 2GHz C2D, 2GB RAM, GMA X3100, and a 7200 rpm 100GB HDD, about how much life could I expect on a 6 cell? And how much of a difference is there in battery life and visibility between the 14.1" and the 15" screens (assuming they were widescreens)?

One last thing - How much would a better graphics card (like the ATI X1300 64MB or the nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M) hurt battery life and help the system perform?

PS looking to stay around $1500 here.

[ryengineer]

Due to the latter fact I was wondering actually how often would one usually use their laptop off the plug.

Merely depends on the demand of your faculty, feasibility of power and lastly and most importantly your usuage.

I intend to play some games and I want to run Vista comfortably so I would be shooting for a T series thinkpad with 2GB of RAM, at least a 2GHz processor, and at least a GMA X3100.

Latest games will most likely going to bug you due to that gpu. Again as I always say, Thinkpads are business oriented machines and are not designed and targeted at gaming platforms. A little older games will run with no problem imo.

Assuming I did buy T series w/ a 2GHz C2D, 2GB RAM, GMA X3100, and a 7200 rpm 100GB HDD, about how much life could I expect on a 6 cell?

About 3.65 hrs. on lowest optimized settings. (That will specifically be T61 with Intel X3100)

One last thing - How much would a better graphics card (like the ATI X1300 64MB or the nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M) hurt battery life and help the system perform?

ATI X1300 comes with T60 which is a little more better on battery life. It falls between Intel GMA 950 and ATI X1400. Battery is going to last about 3.5 hrs. on maximum settings and about 3:50 or more on optimized with it. ATI and nVidia are both discrete chipsets, in regards of their impact on your computer performance, latter is better card and will make your display brighter but at the same time is demanding and will suck more battery life.

[zahir]

My t60 Core 2 Duo 2ghz with 2 gigs of ram and Intel Graphics gives me between 3.5 hrs - 4.5 hrs depending on my usage.... I generally keep screen brightness at level 4 when not plugged in and level 5 when plugged in.... I use wifi all the time, at home and at work.... to me, this is a very good battery life, most mainstream laptops, though a lot cheaper example hp, dell etc have a battery life not more than 2 hrs....

From what I hear, the better the GPU the worse the battery life, but I could be wrong. As pointed out by ryengineer, thinkpads are more targeted to business productivity, you'd prolly be happier going in for a good HP dv laptop or the Viao SZ series if you're into gaming.

Good luck
Cheers...

[tomh009]

One last thing - How much would a better graphics card (like the ATI X1300 64MB or the nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M) hurt battery life and help the system perform?

The GMA X3100 graphics are pretty good IMHO, including support for DirectX 10 -- just not as good as ATI or NVIDIA. For occasional gaming, you should be fine with those, just don't expect high-end frame rates for new high-end games.

For sure ATI/NVIDIA will run hotter and use more battery. Lenovo quotes 5.7h for X3100 with the 6-cell, and 3.8h for the NVIDIA.
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pcinstitu ... tabook.pdf

[ryengineer]

From what I hear, the better the GPU the worse the battery life,

The discrete the chipset is the lower the battery life will be. Integrated gpu cards like Intels will definitely be going to give a big boast to your battery life, not to mention your laptop will suffer with lower brighterness and other resolution matters as compared to discrete chipsets.

[tomh009]

Brightness, resolution (on the built-in LCD panel) and colour reproduction are dependent strictly on the panel, not on the graphics chipset. The discrete chipsets provide increased performance, but the display quality is not affected one way or the other.

[Superego]

...most of the class rooms have AC adaptors at the desks. Due to the latter fact I was wondering actually how often would one usually use their laptop off the plug.

Allow me to offer my opinion as another student. My rule of thumb is that anything that is scheduled (class, meeting with professors, presentations, etc.) will most likely use AC. It's the impromptu stuff that will use battery. Are you sold on the 6 cell? The 9 cell is a bit to lug around (depending on what else you have to carry) but it would help solve your issue of battery life.

As far as the graphics card is concerned, I think it basically comes down whether you want performance or battery life. One thing to consider is your choice of major. If you're going into any of the sciences, you may want the better card for things like Solidworks, MATLAB, CAD, etc. Otherwise, go with the integrated GPU.

And welcome to the forum!

[ryengineer]

Brightness, resolution (on the built-in LCD panel) and colour reproduction are dependent strictly on the panel, not on the graphics chipset.

Thanks for your clarification, I was under the impression it did somehow.

[perry_78]

I *need* 5 hours of use at least. I usually end the day with about 10% battery charge left.

[BVHeck]

I did consider a different brand computer but Lenovo's durability and that keyboard have me sold .

I think limitting my gaming capabilities would be good for my studies, but I'm betting that in 6 months an Intel X3100 will be long obsolete and I'll really start to get behind and be at a disadvantage. About how long down the road would the ATI and nVIDIA cards be sufficient?

And about how far does a 9 cell battery stick out the back on a t60/t61? The extra weight shouldn't be a problem but I don't like the idea of a critical piece just sticking out waiting to be clipped and then broken.

[XIII]

If you need battery life, definitely go with the X3100. According to Anandtech forum, X3100 is capable of hardware transforming and vertex shading. Intel is currently working on driver to take advantage of this. Once they finish, expect the performance to get closer to ATI X1300.