new laptop?

http://www.asus.com/Eee/Eee_Pad/Eee_Slate_EP121/

I really hate that about laptops, no matter how much I take care of the battery, it always seems to degrade really fast. My current laptop battery lasts about 10 minutes on a full charge, so it's at home all the time.

oh god ssd mysterious operational latency = 1st gen ssd with the "stutter" issues >.>

I got my Dell XPS M1530 about 2.5 years ago. I hope this doesn't mean it's near the end of its life X_X

Anemism said:
I really hate that about laptops, no matter how much I take care of the battery, it always seems to degrade really fast. My current laptop battery lasts about 10 minutes on a full charge, so it's at home all the time.

My battery lasted me three years, and even then it was only about half degraded. But when the running time was only 01:40:00 to begin with, that's not a lot of leeway for degradation...
My current laptop's battery lasts ~04:00:00 hours, and there's only three years between the two. Oh, the pros and cons of living during a technological boom...

3 years? honestly even 2 years pretty much already means your PC is "old". Although at the very least, i say you should be able to use one for 5 years before everything starts not being "compatible" anymore.

i'm using a Dell Latitude D600 i bought from a college surplus about two years ago. with a 25 Gig hard drive and ~40 minutes battery life, i would have to say, setting aside other factors (i.e. fell off a table last summer) it is practically dead.

ThunderBird said:
My battery lasted me three years, and even then it was only about half degraded. But when the running time was only 01:40:00 to begin with, that's not a lot of leeway for degradation...
My current laptop's battery lasts ~04:00:00 hours, and there's only three years between the two. Oh, the pros and cons of living during a technological boom...

I actually got an old 7 year old laptop when I was 9 (Yes I know, extremely young to have a computer of any kind, but where I live kids get an iPhone at 6 years old :/). That thing lasted me 3 years. It was great, but my bro hogged it all the time so I guess it wasn't technically mine... But whatever.

That should teach Kogasa not to pick up a Dell again.

Anemism said:
I really hate that about laptops, no matter how much I take care of the battery, it always seems to degrade really fast. My current laptop battery lasts about 10 minutes on a full charge, so it's at home all the time.

that feel when your laptop turned into a desktop
;_;

I despise Dells. I get to destroy them at the shop when they are beyond repair.

In other words, a worthy and necessary purchase. Nothing you can really do when things crap out that badly.

Artist commentary:

This is an artist-purveyor tablet PC that went on sale just this year and was sold out immediately.

Twice, I had the timing right to buy one, but I didn't have enough money in my wallet, so I couldn't get it and had to swallow my tears.

I figured I'd buy one later when I had enough money to afford it, but before I knew it, they were discontinued.

Later, the successor model, the B-121, went on sale, but it costs about 50% more, so I haven't made a grab for one yet.

Using a MacBook I got back in mid-2007. Battery works just fine still. Only issues are (a) the DVD drive has become a recalcitrance elemental (at least I have my XBox 360 and iMac for that), and (b) the keyboard occasionally won't register certain keys. Usually the closing curly brace, and certain shift-capitalizations (as in, one shift key won't capitalize I, O, etc., but the other will), but on one instance the RETURN KEY wouldn't cooperate! (Thankfully, it turned out the Enter key DID still work, although iText doesn't seem to know what the Enter key is...The Return key is currently operative again, by the way.)

On the laptop discussion, I was told that battery power and general slow-down usually occurs right after warranty wears off. How they do this is beyond me, but I guess it does make sense with the laptop markets nowadays. If laptops do last long, that means less buyers. Practically, the moment you get yourself a laptop, it's already obsolete in the face of the newer ones being released...

At least, that's what I've been told anyway. I'm still using this 4-year old Dell.

My dad hasn't switched off his laptop for five years or so except for very few occasions. Its battery is completely dead, so it gets switched off when it's removed from power. It suffered numerous forcible shut-downs in blackouts. Still going strong.

I'm not sure whether that model is that reliable, or whether he took a real good care of his laptop, but some laptops do last long and strong.

In regards to quality, I believe that usually it's bad copy (and bad luck) that's more significant. There's story of notebook from notorious brand that lasted three years while other unit is going to the hospital in a few months.

But 3 years warranty is usually limited to the more expensive business notebooks like Thinkpad or Fujitsu. Most only gave 1 year (and only six months for the battery).

Anemism said:
I really hate that about laptops, no matter how much I take care of the battery, it always seems to degrade really fast. My current laptop battery lasts about 10 minutes on a full charge, so it's at home all the time.

That and how battery care is such an arcane art.
Some say charge often, another say deep cycle. Some say remove the battery, while another said keep the battery attached all the time.

Seika said:
In regards to quality, I believe that usually it's bad copy (and bad luck) that's more significant. There's story of notebook from notorious brand that lasted three years while other unit is going to the hospital in a few months.

But 3 years warranty is usually limited to the more expensive business notebooks like Thinkpad or Fujitsu. Most only gave 1 year (and only six months for the battery).
That and how battery care is such an arcane art.
Some say charge often, another say deep cycle. Some say remove the battery, while another said keep the battery attached all the time.

That's actually rather easy to solve. There's a site, Battery University (http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries), that gives you a definitive guide: keep it charged at all times, around 95-97%, and the less it drops, the better. Li-based batteries are rated for 0-100% cycles, so the fewer complete cycles it has, the better off it is.
Deep-cycling has not been necessary ever since Ni-Cd batteries were phased out, as others do not exhibit the memory effect. Even though it's not strictly necessary, if you find that the governor circuit inside your battery is drifting (wrong percentages associated with a given voltage, early shutdowns at, say, 5-10% charge), it might be a good idea to pull the battery down to zero with a light load, then charge it back up to 100% so the governor is re-calibrated. This can squeeze a bit more life out of seemingly irrecoverable batteries too, but don't count on it restoring your laptop power cell to its former glory...

I can understand how excited Kogasauthor feels about getting a new computer, especially an ASUS. I myself got a new ASUS computer at the beginning of summer, had a few problems, but other than that its an amazing computer

dctreborn said:
I got my Dell XPS M1530 about 2.5 years ago. I hope this doesn't mean it's near the end of its life X_X

ive got a M1530 too that still manages to keep alive. what you (and all M1530 owners) have to worry about most tho is the GPU failing and not being able to replace it, because the machine is one of the ones from the nVidia manufacturing defect for the 8x00 GPUs and the video card's a ticking time bomb.

Lick_King said:
My dad hasn't switched off his laptop for five years or so except for very few occasions. Its battery is completely dead, so it gets switched off when it's removed from power. It suffered numerous forcible shut-downs in blackouts. Still going strong.

I'm not sure whether that model is that reliable, or whether he took a real good care of his laptop, but some laptops do last long and strong.

I can say the same for mine though some of my keys are dead so I'm using a spare keyboard.

Good ole Dell! Nothing like dead video, blown screen, or dead keyboard.

/ex-Dell tech

The_Shadow said:
Good ole Dell! Nothing like dead video, blown screen, or dead keyboard.

/ex-Dell tech

hey, me too!

Another reason to stay with desktops :)

I've bought from dell as long as I can remember (bought an XPS 15 laptop [decked in top-range hardware, mind] in March) but a friend I had back in high school's dad had a hobby of building desktops, and built every working computer in their house(4 IRC). He'd swear by ASUS, so I assume they're pretty good buys.

I have an old Dell Latitude D620 circa 2007. When it comes to way-too-old laptops, this one is freaking top tier. 64-bit Core 2 Duo CPU and 2 gigs of RAM are plenty for Arch Linux and I can always swap the 80 gig drive for an SSD if I ever feel 30 seconds is an unreasonable boot time (plus 20 seconds if I want the desktop). The bigger battery it has gives me a solid hour or two of usage. In case of breakage I could switch out almost anything save for the motherboard.

They don't make 'em like this anymore.

(The funny thing is, it probably wasn't all that great when it was first released.)

Is it natural for my Dell laptop to to have 1502 hr battery without plug?