Battery Life and Portability vs Performance When on a Budget

Scrutinize

Scrutinize

Scrutinize

Soldato
Joined
4 Apr 2003
Posts
8,107
I am currently looking at two laptops and have the choice between an ati 4330 on the acer timeline series with an Intel su4100 and 8 hour battery life or an aspire with ati 4570 and Intel t4400 but only 2 hour battery life. Both come in at the same £400 price point. I was wondering how you view battery life and portability verses performance. I dont really game but if I had the better graphics I would a bit with some rts type things and dig out oblivion. Equally portability would be nice. I guess the 4330 would still give me some gaming action though on low res.

Neither come out as a clear winner for me so any musings by you lot on this topic in general would help especially when the budget is tight.

I imagine both will cope with office and CS3 so thats not an issue.
 
Last edited:
I'd go for portability personally, the power of the other laptop is useless if the battery is flat when you need it :p

In seriousness it depends on your uses. It doesn't sound like you need something powerful, but do you need something portable?
 
Performance all the way, most of the places I'd go to with my laptop a wall socket is not an issue so it'd live most of its life plugged in to power.
 
Well it depends on where and how you will use it, I'd pick performance because I love games and any boring moment is good for a blast imho...

You can always buy additional batteries for the performance lappy if needed later, if you can live with a bit of a hassle changing them over all the time of course...

Battery life in specs is optimistic though, so if you plan on working a lot without power than get the one with the good battery.
 
Are you going to use it on the battery often? 2.5 hrs vs 8 hrs is a big difference, but if you're gonna use it on AC that doesn't matter and you may as well have the better performance.

Personally I'd sacrifice performance for the better battery life, less weight and bulk. I have a vostro 1500 and the size and weight (3kg) is one of the reasons I don't use it much (it also gets way too hot when gaming). If I used it on a desk though, and never took it anywhere, I wouldn't care about that stuff at all and would just want the best performance.

It really comes down to where and how it's going to be used.
 
I want a laptop for when I cannot use a desktop. So mobility definitely. If I want performance, I have a desktop, notebook is for larking about. Although I've been coding on my UL30A. It's a bit of a pain, but doable.

the thought of a notebook with gaming capabilities is still always at the back of my mind, but then you can only game on those when you are near a power outlet, or you'll get one maybe two hours worth. And I never see the use of a needing a gaming machine outside my house, apart from maybe, occasional Guild Wars meet with friends, stuff like that. Hauling the desktop around is not fun. Coincidently, the arrival of Guild Wars 2 / Diablo 3 may re-ignite my interest in a notebook with decent gaming capabilities.

I suppose you could have both. A desktop replacement, good enough to move around the house while still enslaved to the power grid, and a CULV notebook for Starbucks (only joking).
 
Last edited:
As a counter suggestion, there's a place doing M11x refurbs for around £550. Bit more than those machines I think, but from a gaming standpoint it obliterates both of them while having good battery life to boot :)
 
Cheers for the help. On reflection I think I am going to wait and up the budget quite a bit as both are too much of a compromise.

This is mainly as portability wins out after I weighed up the pros and cons.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom