Good idea giving a realistic scale to the battery life for laptops
[Engadget] AMD proposes new laptop battery life metrics, Intel is like "whatevs"
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AMD has struggled of late to produce anything akin to a "good idea," but we've got to give a serious high five to senior VP and CMO Nigel Dessau on this one. While pumping gas one day and thinking about the low / high MPG ratings on vehicles, he began to wonder why laptops are being left out of that scheme. Handsets have talk time / standby time, PMPs have separate longevity ratings for audio and video -- so why on Earth are we generally given just a single figure for laptops? Testing has shown that almost always the quoted figures from laptop makers aren't even close to what users get in the real world, so Dessau is suggesting we implement a "guide rail" system that explains a maximum and minimum life expectancy. As for Intel's take? "There are many ways to measure battery life. We believe the best way to determine how to measure battery life is by making proposals and debating it in industry consortiums and not via a blog post." Oh Intel, could you possibly be any more corporate? |
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a) Way too many ways to measure it.
I can think of 36 different completely valid ways to measure the battery life of my Lenovo T400:
- 3 different brightness settings, 100%, 50-60%, and 0%
- Normal internet browsing, gaming, video playback(divx/mpeg), dvd playback, no internet (eg. word processing), and idling
- Using GMA 4500 or HD 3470
3x6x2 = 36
b) Too depressing.
The vast majority of laptops out there get maybe 3 hours under normal conditions and around 1 hour doing anything interesting. People don't want to hear that. They want to hear things like Apple saying its newest iPod gets 36 hours of battery life (with the screen off the whole time listening to 32kbps audio on the lowest volume
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IMO they should just give you the wattage. Like 20W normal, 40W load plus 10-20W for the screen. Then let the customers to the simple math to figure out their battery life.
| so why on Earth are we generally given just a single figure for laptops? |
I can think of 36 different completely valid ways to measure the battery life of my Lenovo T400:
- 3 different brightness settings, 100%, 50-60%, and 0%
- Normal internet browsing, gaming, video playback(divx/mpeg), dvd playback, no internet (eg. word processing), and idling
- Using GMA 4500 or HD 3470
3x6x2 = 36
b) Too depressing.
The vast majority of laptops out there get maybe 3 hours under normal conditions and around 1 hour doing anything interesting. People don't want to hear that. They want to hear things like Apple saying its newest iPod gets 36 hours of battery life (with the screen off the whole time listening to 32kbps audio on the lowest volume
IMO they should just give you the wattage. Like 20W normal, 40W load plus 10-20W for the screen. Then let the customers to the simple math to figure out their battery life.
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Ha! I hope this is some kind of joke. Do you really expect the general public to understand anything about that?
Originally Posted by nathris IMO they should just give you the wattage. Like 20W normal, 40W load plus 10-20W for the screen. Then let the customers to the simple math to figure out their battery life. |
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10 hours if you crank the music
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Originally Posted by nathris The vast majority of laptops out there get maybe 3 hours under normal conditions and around 1 hour doing anything interesting. People don't want to hear that. They want to hear things like Apple saying its newest iPod gets 36 hours of battery life (with the screen off the whole time listening to 32kbps audio on the lowest volume
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I'd like them to always show how much mAh the battery have so that can measure ow much the PC will run before depleting all the power from the battery.
Originally Posted by nathris a) Way too many ways to measure it. I can think of 36 different completely valid ways to measure the battery life of my Lenovo T400: - 3 different brightness settings, 100%, 50-60%, and 0% - Normal internet browsing, gaming, video playback(divx/mpeg), dvd playback, no internet (eg. word processing), and idling - Using GMA 4500 or HD 3470 3x6x2 = 36 b) Too depressing. The vast majority of laptops out there get maybe 3 hours under normal conditions and around 1 hour doing anything interesting. People don't want to hear that. They want to hear things like Apple saying its newest iPod gets 36 hours of battery life (with the screen off the whole time listening to 32kbps audio on the lowest volume
IMO they should just give you the wattage. Like 20W normal, 40W load plus 10-20W for the screen. Then let the customers to the simple math to figure out their battery life. |
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Since when are most customers smart enough?
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Originally Posted by nathris IMO they should just give you the wattage. Like 20W normal, 40W load plus 10-20W for the screen. Then let the customers to the simple math to figure out their battery life. |
Didn't even know AMD was still working on laptop stuff...
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Puma platform would be my laptop of choice buddy. Then grab one of their new HD4K laptop GPUs and call it a day.
Originally Posted by Cheetos316 Didn't even know AMD was still working on laptop stuff...
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what? their chipsets are way better. if it weren't for the c2ds, amd's are a far better option.
Originally Posted by Cheetos316 Didn't even know AMD was still working on laptop stuff...
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