Battery Usage

I'm looking at Dell laptops and had a couple questions

How much faster is the battery drained on a core-duo processor vs the
pentium m ?

How about the effect a 128mb graphics card over the integrated graphics
?

Thanks,
Pete

 

Hi Pete,

I doubt that you will find any definitive information. I have seen
some web articles about Core Duo and power consumption, but I was more
confused after reading them.

I can share my personal experience with two recent laptop purchases
though:

1) An Inspiron 630m with Pentium M 2 2GHz and 1G RAM, 100G 5400 hard
drive, integrated graphics, Truebrite WXGA. Extended battery.

2) An Inspiron E1505 with Core Duo T2400 @ 1.83GHz and 1G RAM, 100G
5400 hard drive, ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 (but I don't know how much
RAM that has, and how it uses "hypermemory), Truebrite WSXGA. Extended
battery.

On both I have them set so that on battery power the display shuts off
after 1 minute and the hard disks after 3 minutes. I also dim the
screens about 3 notches. With the Truebrite display starting out
brighter, they can be dimmed more. I don't know whether that
translates into any real gains though, I may be comparing apples and
oranges...

I also have a quicklaunch shortcut to the blank screen saver that I
sometimes use to shut the display off sooner than 1 minute, and I set
the background color of the desktop on each laptop to be black,
reasoning that because the desktop doesn't need to be blue for
example, that it might save if black means less power is needed.

I am amazed at the battery life that I can get from the 630m running
basic productivity tasks. I can go through a 2 hour meeting and still
have over 80% left on the battery. I tend to take a lot of notes, but
even still the laptop is idle a lot.

I am also amazed at the battery life that I can get from the E1505
running the same kinds of tasks. After a 2 hour meeting instead of
80%, the battery might be at 63% compared to the 630m which is great
considering the "dedicated" (hypermemory) video card, Core Duo
processor, and larger screen.

Still, in both cases, my expectations were exceeded (gad, I must have
gotten too much of Tom Peters in the 80's!).

When I first saw the new design of the Inspirons I was disappointed
because in the past I liked having the modular bay for another
battery. My Inspiron 4000 / 4100's were getting 6 hours long before
that became more common, and then I had D505, 630m's, and 8600's that
used the (same) modular batteries.

I can take either computer portably and not have to worry about
battery life based on my usage.

When I ordered these computers, instead of just upgrading the normal
battery to extended, I kept the normal battery and got an additional
extended. That way I have a normal battery as a backup if I should
ever need it for only around $30.

I recommend reading some of the CNET reviews of the system(s) you are
considering. There are quite a few user reviews out now for the
E1505, some of which have integrated video, some which have dedicated,
and some of which are Core Solo. The Inspiron 6000 user reviews could
give you an idea of a Pentium M 15.4", and the XPS 140 / 630m reviews
could give you an idea of the Pentium M 14".

Journey

 

Correction: above should say "600m's", not "630m's"

Journey