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Thread: Any System76 laptops with 4h+ battery life?

  1. #1
    Join Date
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    Any System76 laptops with 4h+ battery life?

    I'm looking to replace my current laptop and am seriously considering System76. I was excited to see some sandy bridge laptops available, but I was disappointed with 2.5-3 hours of battery life.

    I'm looking for a laptop with at least 4 hours or more of battery life. 5 would be better, 6+ would be really great!

    If the Macbook Pro 13 can get 7-9 hours, why can't anybody else???

    I want a full size screen (13 or larger) and a full sized keyboard. Does System76 have any laptops that will fit the bill?


    And perhaps a System76 employee can let me/us know when their laptops with Sandy Bridge will have better battery life? I thought one of the main benefits of Sandy Bridge was better power management...

  2. #2
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    Re: Any System76 laptops with 4h+ battery life?

    Quote Originally Posted by icknein View Post
    <snip>
    If the Macbook Pro 13 can get 7-9 hours, why can't anybody else???<snip>
    My wife uses a macbook pro 15. It gets around 4 hours of battery life in real world usage. Sometimes less if she is doing lots of real work that uses the discreet graphics.

    I think there are probably three things at work here:

    1) marketing hype vs. real world performance
    2) linux - power management isn't as bad as it used to be, but it's not as good as under Windows or OS X. My macbook gets 2-3 hours under OS X and 1.5-2 hours under Ubuntu.
    3) Apple R&D - This is wild speculation, but I think the situation with patents / intellectual property in the US probably prevents smaller companies from leveraging improvements in battery technology.

  3. #3
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    Re: Any System76 laptops with 4h+ battery life?

    I believe that both the Starling and the Lemur if configured with the larger battery will give about four hours of battery life. The Lemur has a 13 inch screen. It can be loaded with a boatload of RAM and has several Hard drive configurations including solid state drives (think MacBook Air.)

    The Starling has a bit longer battery life, but being a "netbook" has a more modest CPU and may not be ideal for more demanding applications. So it really depends on your needs.

    By the way, I believe that the Lemur uses the same Lithium Ion Polymer battery technology used in the newest Macs. Polymer technology simply lets laptop manufactures design batteries in custom shapes to maximize battery volume and performance.

    Joe

  4. #4
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    Re: Any System76 laptops with 4h+ battery life?

    Quote Originally Posted by nevius View Post
    My wife uses a macbook pro 15. It gets around 4 hours of battery life in real world usage. Sometimes less if she is doing lots of real work that uses the discreet graphics.

    I think there are probably three things at work here:

    1) marketing hype vs. real world performance
    2) linux - power management isn't as bad as it used to be, but it's not as good as under Windows or OS X. My macbook gets 2-3 hours under OS X and 1.5-2 hours under Ubuntu.
    3) Apple R&D - This is wild speculation, but I think the situation with patents / intellectual property in the US probably prevents smaller companies from leveraging improvements in battery technology.
    I have a MBP 13 and 17. I was very disappointed when I realized that I would only get 3-4 hours while doing the same things on my MBP 17, as I got on my 13 MBP (which gets 7-9 hours). I didn't take in account the 1920x1200 screen that the 17 MBP has, when I thought I should still get around 6h, on the larger screen.

    On my 13", I really try to squeeze all the battery I can because I use it for long flights (e.g. Chicago to Narita) and still get 7-9 hours with the screen almost all the way down, among other things. Even on my 17 MBP I get 3-4 hours using the web (no Flash and/or Youtube), Word, Textual, terminal (ssh to server), TextEdit, iTunes, iCal, and Skype (for IMing, not video chatting).

    I always have wifi (Airport) on (unless on a flight), never use Bluetooth so that's always disabled.


    It's very unfortunate I cannot get at least 5 hours without having to swap batteries.

    >>I believe that both the Starling and the Lemur if configured with the larger battery will give about four hours of battery life. The Lemur has a 13 inch screen. It can be loaded with a boatload of RAM and has several Hard drive configurations including solid state drives (think MacBook Air.) <<

    According to post #6 here from an employee, Serval gets 2.5-3 hours on the new Sandy Bridge laptops. I know Sandy Bridge with Linux is still ongoing -- is there a chance we could see better power management than current quotes, if I bought either the Serval or Gazelle now? I'd really like to replace my laptops this week, but I need to get 4/5+ hours of battery life (and I do not want to get a tablet because my laptop cannot last more than 3 hours. If I buy a tablet, it will be for different reasons).

    Another System76 employee told me I can get 6 hours with an extended battery on the Lemur. It's a tough decision: wait an unknown amount of time for Sandy Bridge laptops to come en masse or purchase a Lemur and Serval (or Gazelle) to replace my two laptops OR purchase the Gazelle now and replace the Lemur when it has a sandy bridge option (or other laptops in that range become available).

    Researching a new laptop is taking entirely too long... heh, I've spent a week or so on this and I need to decide soon and move on!

  5. #5
    Join Date
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    Re: Any System76 laptops with 4h+ battery life?

    I have a Serval Pro with an I-7 chip with 6Gb of ram and it only gets 1 hour on the standard shipping battery. I suspect that it is a question of both screen size and CPU.

  6. #6
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    Re: Any System76 laptops with 4h+ battery life?

    Please note that that's a quote from the old Serval, the SerP6. The new SerP7 gets 2.5-3 hours.

    The CPU's will all scale back as needed to conserve battery life. The CPU thus doesn't affect too much until you start looking at different architectures (i.e. Atom vs. Sandy Bridge vs. ULV vs. Arrandale) Thus far, Sandy Bridge is much more efficient.
    Ian Santopietro - System76 Technical Support.
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