Bought a 9 cell battery for the netbook

[Iain]

It's big and ugly and somewhat heavy, but in my bag it's hardly a noticeable increase in weight.

The major upside is that I am getting over 7 hours of use out of the netbook. I'm can now sit in a cafe and pretend to write a novel for a whole day.

[Devonai]

Feh, some of us can pretend to write novels anywhere.

[Balog]

Did you have the 6 cell prior to this? How much of an increase did you notice?

[Iain]

3 cell previously, so a huge increase in battery life. Probably only getting 2 to 2.5 hours with the 3 cell.

[MillCreek]

Hmm, perhaps I should start watching out for the prices of a 9 cell battery for my MSI Wind.

[KD5NRH]

I'm can now sit in a cafe and pretend to write a novel for a whole day.

Ever heard of pens and paper?

[Firethorn]

Ever heard of pens and paper?

My handwriting is so bad compared to my typing that I'm actually better off composing on the computer.

I can actually type faster than I can write legibly, even for myself.

[zahc]

Point: Devices like the iPhone, blackberry, palm pilot, etc seem to be able to do all kinds of cool things like surf the web, run basic office applications, email, etc.

Point: They run all day on a ~2Ah battery

Why do netbooks seem to run only a few hours even with the heavy, special 6-cell battery? No matter that my netbook is small, and no matter that it lasts 6 hours....I still have to bring the power adapter to work with me and outlet-hunt, eventually. I don't have to do that with smartphones. Why don't they put an iPhone inside a netbook case, stuff the remaining space with batteries, and give me an iPhone-like device, with a useful keyboard and a useful screen, that runs a week or more? Or at least a full work day, easily? It's like when you make something that looks like a laptop, you instantly regress to laptop-land expectations of use.

[RaspberrySurprise]

Point: Devices like the iPhone, blackberry, palm pilot, etc seem to be able to do all kinds of cool things like surf the web, run basic office applications, email, etc.

Point: They run all day on a ~2Ah battery

Why do netbooks seem to run only a few hours even with the heavy, special 6-cell battery? No matter that my netbook is small, and no matter that it lasts 6 hours....I still have to bring the power adapter to work with me and outlet-hunt, eventually. I don't have to do that with smartphones. Why don't they put an iPhone inside a netbook case, stuff the remaining space with batteries, and give me an iPhone-like device, with a useful keyboard and a useful screen, that runs a week or more? Or at least a full work day, easily? It's like when you make something that looks like a laptop, you instantly regress to laptop-land expectations of use.

Because in comparison the processing power and memory of the iphone or crackberry is tiny compared to a laptop. Not saying you've got a bad idea there though.

Also storage.

[Balog]

It's like the difference between a 250cc motorcycle and a small car. Sure, they have "kinda" the same functionality, but they don't really compare in a lot of ways.

[Gewehr98]

It takes juice to crunch numbers and display their results in big, beautiful, high-resolution color. 

My Palm Pilot cellphone lets me surf the web in a hobbled and hackneyed sort of fashion, but pales in comparison to either my Pentium-M Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook, or this quad Xeon 3.0Ghz IBM workstation.

Put a 1280x1024 32-bit display in a Blackberry, with several Gb of memory, and a 2-3Ghz multi-core processor, and then you'll have something.

As for putting Blackberry innards into a notebook or palmtop case?  Blackberry used 80386 chips on their earlier models, with their fastest processor now running at 624Mhz.  That's fine for the limited functionality of a PDA like the Blackberry, but a wee bit dated with respect to real PCs, portable or otherwise.

It's an apples vs. oranges comparison, really.

[KD5NRH]

Why do netbooks seem to run only a few hours even with the heavy, special 6-cell battery?

Display size and baclight is a huge factor.  For example, I can surf the net on my Nokia 6126 for maybe two hours.  I can use it as a bluetooth modem for my laptop for about 3-4 hours easily before I have to plug it in.  The only real difference is that the display is in power-save mode with the backlight off while using it as a modem.

Of course, I tend to keep it plugged in whenever possible, since the laptop battery's only good for a couple hours anyway, and if I've got power for one, I've got it for both.  I've also got an XPal backup for the phone, (thanks to Woot running this model for $16 so we could get one each; they're the perfect solution to my wife's habit of running the phone down in a day, but only charging it about every three days) but I prefer to just plug it in and save the backup for when I can't get to other power sources.

[Iain]

Somebody has built a netbook sized extension for a smartphone. You attach your phone to it, you then get your phone OS on a bigger screen with a keyboard. Can't remember what it was called, think it has been a flop.

Now I've got a decent OS on it (Xubuntu with fluxbox) the netbook is an almost fully functional computer with a couple of compromises (keyboard size, screen size) that are more than made up for by the fact that when I drop the thing into my bag with my work stuff I barely notice the additional weight.

[Harold Tuttle]

With a keyboard for the iphone/itouch and a heads up display, a newspaper reporter would be quite happy

Heck, Natty Geo used to send reporters out to the field with 32K TSR80 100s

[Jamisjockey]

My wife's laptop (which I'm on now) is the same way.  Hours of screwing around on APS and facebook if I want....

[zahc]

That's fine for the limited functionality of a PDA like the Blackberry, but a wee bit dated with respect to real PCs, portable or otherwise.

That's exactly it. As soon as it looks like a PC people expect it to behave like a "real" PC, battery life and all. At the same time I know tons of people that don't take their laptops on vacation anymore because their iphone can cover them. I think the optimal device would be something ARM-based in an eeepc-sized case with enough batteries to make it last several days, which should be no challenge. I know display backlights take power, but nothing like an Intel Atom processor. As for storage, 8+ gigs of flash would be enough.

[Gewehr98]

What's wrong with a laptop or notebook running like a "real" PC?

[zahc]

Nothing. But PCs are tethered to the wall. And they have cruft. You have to bring the power adapter along, still.  Even the longest-lasting netbooks (using bulbous and oversized batteries) only get like 5 hours of battery life. Smartphones last all day on tiny batteries. You leave the charger at home. Clearly with even a normal-sized laptop battery, a smartphone would run several days. It would be possible to make a netbook-type device that was both more powerful than a typical smartphone, that has a full keyboard, and a full screen, and yet lasts even longer on a battery than a smartphone. There's this uncharted middle ground where we can have tiny, very useful iPhones, and 'normal' laptops that last a couple hours on an oversized battery, with nothing in between. It would be straightforeward to essentially put the iPhone in a superior netbook-shaped form factor while retaining its superior low-power-draw characteristics. But it's a psychological thing where as soon as something looks like a PC, people suddenly don't care about short battery life. Personally, even the iPhone is too big to EDC. I would love to have the same thing in a netbook-size format. I have an Acer Aspire one with a 6-cell battery. It lasts about 4-5 hours. 95% of what I do is websurfing, simple document creation and editing, and, well, that's it.

[Balog]

A smartphone trying to view full webpages, create and edit documents, and especially play movies, will die as fast or faster than a netbook.

[Gewehr98]

It would be straightforeward [sic] to essentially put the iPhone in a superior netbook-shaped form factor while retaining its superior low-power-draw characteristics

No, it wouldn't be straightforward. As soon as you got somewhere close to a netbook or larger in screen size and resolution, your battery life would go back to the 5 or so hours. More backlit pixels = more juice.

For example, a Blackberry 8830 has a screen resolution of 320x240, in 65,536 colors.

An iPhone delivers 320x480, in millions of colors. That's still well under basic VGA in resolution.

My ancient Dell Inspiron 6000 (which was considered a desktop replacement when it hit the market) is currently set at 1680x1050 resolution on its 15.4" display.  It has a 1.8Ghz Pentium-M, and 2.0Gb DDR2 memory, DVD burner, Firewire, etc.  It has been used as a desktop replacement when I was moving cross-country and staying with family shortly after I retired.  I get about 5 hours on a new battery pack, not bad for what it's capable of.  I've not been in an airport situation so far where I couldn't get by with the internal battery pack and the spare I keep in my Wilson's Leather backpack w/notebook compartment, truthfully.

I said "ancient" because it's a 2005 model, and if you look at the current versions of the MacBook Pro, Alienware Area-51, Lenovo Thinkpads, or Dell XPS they'll blow my Inspiron out of the water with respect to display, battery life, and processor capability.  Burn a DVD on a Blackberry, or rip MP3s from an audio CD, etc.  Different tools for different jobs, as it were. 

IOW, you don't get something for nothing, Zahc.

One could argue for a clear-back palmtop display, sans backlighting, with something like 800x600 resolution, that uses ambient light to create the images.  It would suck in low-light or nighttime settings, but would save some of that electrical consumption. Using a Speedstep-type processor would also save juice, and that technology's well-established.

I would have a hard time paying money for a notebook or palmtop downrated to the display and computing power of a Blackberry or iPhone.  That would be the worst of both worlds, all the bulk of the bigger machines, with none of the horsepower. 

No thank you.

BTW, I see that the new 17" MacBook Pro is touting an 8-hour battery life. 

Battery technology is moving forward smartly, it would appear. 
 

[KD5NRH]

Nothing. But PCs are tethered to the wall.

Well, I got to looking around XPal's site, and it looks like they've got your solutions: the 8000 (8,000mAH for netbooks) and the 18000 (18,000mAH for netbooks or laptops) should get you a few more hours of usage, at about the size of an external drive.  I've thought about an 18,000, but it looks like I could get about four batteries for my laptop for less money, and have a longer overall runtime.  (though I'd have to hibernate to swap them, it's not such a bad tradeoff)

[Regolith]

I wouldn't want a laptop that wasn't at least somewhat as powerful as my desktop, and that means sacrificing battery life.

Then again, I don't just use my computer for net surfing and word processing;  I use it almost as often for heavy gaming, video editing, graphic design, 3d modeling and occasionally programming.  Very few laptops have the horsepower for that...I think maybe just the MacBook Pros and the Alienware stuff, and maybe the higher end laptops from the other makers, though those usually push the envelope as to what is acceptable. 

But I'll take the decreased battery life in exchange for the power that these platforms would give me.  Besides, A/C and D/C outlets are damn near everywhere in case you need to recharge, and the 7 hour battery life for the top-end MacBook Pro seems like it'd be more than enough for anything except perhaps backpacking trips.

[taurusowner]

I've got an MSI Wind Netbook and I love it.  This is in addition to my Acer Latop and HP Desktop.  The laptop is nice, and I usually take that to school for notes and paper writing, but it's pretty big and it's a chore to lug around.  The netbook fits right in a pock on my backpack and is light enough that I don't even know it's there.  It's something I can pull out if I'm chilling at a restaurant, or at a friends house or whatever.  I can just leave it in my backpack with the charge cable, and it doesn't even take up much room.  I keep all sorts of other readiness stuff in that backpack too like another P99 reload, Surefire, first aid stuff, etc.  So having a tiny laptop in there rounds out the package nicely.  Netbooks are great if you know what they are good for and what they're not.  All 3 of my computers now fill niches that the others really can't.  Call me satisfied.