Light laptop with long battery life advice

[greggster]

Hi all, tried a search before just in case but couldn'r find anything. Any IT gurus out there who can advise if my choice is ok for a business laptop based on my brief of small, light, long battery life, screen size 13" - managed to narrow it down to this (all by myself!!!) - Acer Aspire Timeline 3810T;

Acer Aspire Timeline 3810T Review on CNET UK

thanks

 

[A210AMG]

Hello

I buy the Toshiba R600 for work but these start around £800 plus vat

Very light, great battery life

We get a 3 year warranty through education also which is nice to have.

Toshiba Portege R600 Review on CNET UK

 

[Ade B]

I have a 15" Acer Aspire & don't rate it. It's not very fast, the screen suffers from bad reflections & washed out colours & the touch pad is rubbish. It is light & has good battery life running in idiot mode. Silly things annoy like the Velcro strap on the power supply being too short to go round the cable & transformer...

My Sony Vaio TZ is in a different league. Not rated by many on here but nicely put together, fairly powerful, decent battery life & with an amazing screen. Cost nearly twice as much though.

Ade

 

[Tan]

I have a lenovo X41 for travel as its very light and good keyboard and screen. The battery life was good, now is not so great.

It may be worth considering a netbook, depending on your budget / computing needs.

 

[Shude]

I have a lenovo X41 for travel as its very light and good keyboard and screen. The battery life was good, now is not so great.

It may be worth considering a netbook, depending on your budget / computing needs.

Our national MD uses an X41 and refuses to part with it, dispite going EOL a few years ago! The X41 was superceded by the X61 and now the X200. We're getting the X200 (actually X200s) as the "light" option for our users that do a lot of travelling. The battery is good for 5-6 hours. Only downsides are no optical drive and high res screen (1440x900) on such a tiny panel makes for tricky reading if your eyesight ain't perfect . We have 5 of them at my office and so far zero complaints!

It's about a grand if you go for a docking station, external dvd-rom drive and additional 90w desktop charger (comes with 65w travel).

 

[whizzkid11]

This is the only one I would go for : HP Elitebook 2530p

Another Link

I have supplied a few of these to forums members - and everyone loves them - made of titanium, with providing full power pc in a small package - D/L layer DVD writer, built in web cam, night lights, etc etc

PM me if you would like to see my one - its highly recommended that you do. I may be able to get one for you at a very heavily reduced price (less than the Acer price)

 

[Sp!ke]

This is the only one I would go for : HP Elitebook 2530p

Another Link

I have supplied a few of these to forums members - and everyone loves them - made of titanium, with providing full power pc in a small package - D/L layer DVD writer, built in web cam, night lights, etc etc

PM me if you would like to see my one - its highly recommended that you do. I may be able to get one for you at a very heavily reduced price (less than the Acer price)

Careful with these 2530's.

The 2530p configuration with the built in optical drive was designed with an expensive 1.8" solid state disk in mind. In this SSD configuration it's probably beyond most peoples budget. If you configure it with a cheaper 1.8" mechanical HDD the price comes down to a more reasonable level but so does disk performance (which is the main bottle neck anyway). The little 1.8" SATA disks are designed for MP3 players and the like, not laptops and in my benchmarks disk read/writes were a whopping 10 times slower than the same laptop in single spindle configuration fitted with a standard 2.5" HDD. This is seriously bad news.

Similarly, dont opt for the model with the built in web cam as the lcd screen fitted (Chi Mei) is of much lesser quality than the models without (Toshiba or Samsung).

The Lenovo X200 is a better choice imho as you get a full blown CPU, a faster bus speed and DDR3 memory (instead of DDR2) all in a smaller lighter better thought out package (where is the keypad drainage on the HP as an example?). Agreeably, the HP has a touchpad as well as a nipple but if you're like me & always plug in a mouse, you can probably live with that.

FWIW, there's no titanium in the 2530P's either; The case is brushed aluminium and plastic & the inner chassis is magnesium (same as 99% of modern laptops)

 

[kay7]

Lenovo SL 300/400/500 best in their class ! Battery life 4-7 hours. Acer are toys, toshiba and sony too expensive ( you pay for a name ). Apple are the best of the best ! Choice is huge

 

[flango]

Dell D420 extended battery on mine lasts around 8 hours

Standard battery about 4 hours

 

[greggster]

Huge thanks to everyone for their advice and especially Was (Whizzkid11) who has sorted me with an amazing HP laptop that suits my brief and at a fantastic price, including loads of extras - cheers :bannana::bannana::bannana:

 

[whizzkid11]

Huge thanks to everyone for their advice and especially Was (Whizzkid11) who has sorted me with an amazing HP laptop that suits my brief and at a fantastic price, including loads of extras - cheers :bannana::bannana::bannana:

You're welcome anytime Gregg! As are all MB Club members...