Chicago (IL) – Hardware designers have made stunning advances in designing much more power-efficient components than most of us are using in their notebooks today. Choosing the options wisely may result up to 50% more battery time in some, with little extra money spent. Unfortunately, there is very little information on these new components out there would provide a guideline what purchase makes sense and which not. Do you know which components have the most impact on the battery time the new generation of notebooks? I bet that there is at least one you wouldn’t expect.
 
This article is really a follow-up article to an article in which I raised some doubt that Hewlett-Packard’s claim that one of its notebooks can be configured in a way to exceed a battery time of 24 hours may not be entirely true. It took some time to catch up with HP and even if the company claims that it has exceeded 24 hours of battery time in Mobilemark, I still believe that it isn’t realistic to expect this notebook will hit 24 hours in a real-world scenario.

Jeremy Brody, HP’s global business notebook marketing manager, disagrees and stated that 24 hours is possible with the right adjustments - turn off your wireless network, dim the screen down and use applications that do not demand too much from your hardware (read about the additional configuration requirements in our previous article.) I will leave it at that and we will know more once the hardware HP described in the configuration will be available.

However, if you think about, the 24-hour claim isn’t really the big deal here. On very few occasions, you may want your notebook to hold up for 24 hours on one charge. The much more interesting question is: What would I have to buy to get a notebook that takes me through an entire workday on one charge – for 8 to 10 hours? Brody had some interesting recommendations, which I believe are important to pass on.

First, you really want to equip your notebook with the most battery capacity that is available. In HP’s case and the 14.1” Elite 6930p notebook that would be the standard 6-cell battery and an optional 12-cell battery, which promise a combined battery time of 16 hours. The extra battery will set you back $190.   

Second, how do you cut the power consumption most effectively beyond a low-power processor? According to Brody, you definitely would want to pick the company’s upcoming LED display, which will be offered as a $50 option in October. The LED display can cut the power consumption dramatically as the LCD typically eats most of the electricity provided by the battery. HP says that the LED alone may extend the battery time by 4 hours.

Read on the next page: An unexpected choice #3.