might consider the second battery cheating the claim slightly. i can get almost unlimited battery life out of my laptop, i just need to leave the portable generator connected to it.

That's clearly a rubbish claim, to have a screen that boosts battery life by four hours.

If true, I'd install it immediately on my old powerbook with its dying battery --- say 25min life left, tops --- and pronto, I'd have a 4+hours workhorse.

So gimme a fraction ("30% longer", yet that depends on the rest of the architecture obviously), or, dare I consider?, something boffinatic like watt/hours.

or more.

With the laptop switched off, of course.

It has to be switched on, you say?

Oh, bugger.

...like this claim...

I'm pretty sure one can take the "four hours" claim in context with the average battery usage for that laptop.

In any event, what I want to see is a battery-life test that is more in line with typical real-world activities--activities that normally thrash a battery to death such as working in a weak WiFi zone, having Bluetooth on all the time because you're using a BT modem, etc..

By HP's claims, the SSD gives 7% savings which gives just under 23hrs, and then remove the screen, thats 4hrs...so urmm we have the Dells 19hr battery life again. Guess it's looking like thats going to be the new norm for ultra endurance machines.

But still, 19hrs from a notebook isn't bad for the benchmarks, and throw in proper usage and the like that will probably be down to about 12-13hrs. Which is pretty handy for a good days work on the move. Guess we'll have to wait till they launch it to see how bad the screen is, but some ultra low power screen could be rather dull on its display quality also.

Hmmm,

So they talk about XP and Vista, but about Linux?

For the record, I can get in excess of four hours from my old Dell Pecision laptop with a second battery - doesn't seem to matter if I'm using Linux or XP. If I could double that to eight hours, I don't think realistically, that I'd really ever need any more. I suspect there are very few people that are truly out of range of mains power (or a cigarette lighter power point in a car) for more than eight hours.

... i take the laptop outside have to go back into the hot box office because some twerp set the maximum brightness to pathetic when running on batteries.

Is the XO the only laptop that really works in daylight?

It's LED backlighting:

http://uglychickens.blogspot.com/2007/05/illumi-lite-led-backlight.html

"They'll have to run Windows XP - not Vista, you'll note; so much for the latest technology." - another moron with "default" claim, that newest is always the best. Vista is great example - IT's not!

I have confirmed from a reliable source (works at Dell tech support) that the 18 hours battery life is not expected while running Windows XP or Vista. Rather the systems will come with an integrated ROM with a cutdown version of Linux optimized for low power. You'll be able to browse the internet, play media and that's about it. 18 hours while running that special version of Linux.

"I suspect there are very few people that are truly out of range of mains power (or a cigarette lighter power point in a car) for more than eight hours."

What hinterland backyard are you living in?

How about the "very few" people who travel on long haul flights and are not fortunate enough to travel in first or business class?

You don't even have to be on an 8 hours flight, because usually you might want to use your laptop on the way to the airport, in the boarding lounge, on the plane, then at the other end after arrival and in the bus/train/taxi on your way to the hotel.

So to standardized on these battery times, they should quote the time the battery lasts while playing a DVD movie.

Anyone could buy enough extra batteries to make their laptop last 24 hours...

How much does it add to the weight.

They should really standardize the battery tests in some way

Sayeth the Register: "Punters will also need to make sure their 6930p uses not only one of Intel's new 80GB solid-state drives but also an 'HP Illumi-Lite LED display'. They'll have to run Windows XP - not Vista, you'll note; so much for the latest technology."

Funny, I thought Vista was still in Beta. I certainly wouldn't use it in a production site.

Wouldn't that actually make XP the latest technology? At least the latest *stable* technology...