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Better battery life and improvements
By Michael Sanford
Notebooks continue to represent a popular choice among
small to medium-sized enterprise road warriors. And while
maximum battery life is a principal feature, buyers must
weigh notebooks' power consumption advantages against
trade-offs in performance.
Indeed, despite growing demand for PDAs, handheld PCs,
and other mobile devices, users often prefer notebooks'
keyboards and screen sizes when crunching numbers,
checking email, or preparing PowerPoint presentations.
The challenge for OEMs has been to boost notebook
battery lives while packing the machines with increasingly
power-hungry CPUs and graphics processors.
The Trade-Off Factor
The ultimate goal? To offer the same capabilities that high-
powered, battleship desktops offer in a notebook form
factor that can run on battery power alone during an entire
workday or transcontinental plane ride. Unfortunately, the
gap remains between ultra-high performance, power-
draining processing power, and long notebook battery
lives.
"It's a battle between end user wants for better battery life
and improvements in technology that sometimes require
more power," says Howard Locker, chief architect for
desktop and mobile development at IBM's personal-
computing division. "Battery life is also a trade-off between
weight and size. You can put a bigger battery in a laptop to
get more battery life, but it will weigh more." Notebook
battery life is largely taxed by the applications running at a
given time and the power of the CPUs, graphics
processors, and other components, which must be scaled
down to reduce power consumption. "For a longer battery
life, a trade-off in performance is thus necessary. It might
take a little longer to do things, but if something takes four
seconds instead of two seconds but your battery lasts
another 45 minutes, then that is a good trade-off," Locker
says. "[Designing] intelligent power management by
detuning functions and performances that are not needed
is critical."
Battery-Life Kings
So which notebooks on the market offer the longest battery
lives? The answer varies according to many performance
variables and form-factor preferences, but Tablet PCs
from Electrovaya (www.electrovaya.com; 905/855-4610)
and notebooks from IBM (www.ibm.com; 888/839-9289)
stand out, says Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle
Group.
"In Tablets the Electrovaya Scribbler is the clear winner
with nine hours of battery life, but of course you would kind
of expect this given Electrovaya is known for its work in
batteries, not computers," Enderle says. "The IBM T Series,
with its large battery, used to be the segment leader with
around six hours of battery life."
So what are Electrovaya's and IBM's secret sauces? "The
Electrovaya uses a special high-capacity battery, and IBM's
product has a combination of a large battery and a system
tuned for battery life as opposed to performance," Enderle
says. "The Electrovaya also has a special high-capacity
battery that is unique¡ªor at least for now."
So what are the trade-offs involved? "Both products are
slow to use, particularly if you run a suite of virus,
antispam, and anti-spyware offerings," Enderle says.
"However, once the applications are up and running, the
performance hit doesn't seem as bad, and many users can
get used to it."
Several components are responsible for the performance
hit vs. long battery life in the IBM T Series and Electrovaya
offerings. "What is causing the performance hit is slower
moving drives, which may at times actually spin nearly all
the way down between reads, processors working at a
fraction of their potential on battery life, dimmer screens,
and lower power fans," Enderle says.
Electrovaya largely attributes the Scribbler's long battery
life to its patented LiIon, 75 watt-hour battery. The SC2100
also features a 1.3GHz Intel Centrino processor, a 12.1-
inch display, 802.11g wireless capabilities, and an 80GB
hard drive and weighs in at 3.5 pounds.
IBM's ThinkPad T43, introduced last month and available
in April, weighs 4.5 pounds and is also equipped with an
Intel Centrino processor that supports up to 2GB of DDR2
system memory. According to IBM, the new T43 can offer
up to eight hours of battery life while running office
applications, including Internet connectivity with an 802.11
connection.
Battle Of The Form Factors
HP (www.hp.com; 800/752-0900) this month attempted to
shake up the battery life sector with the launch of the HP
Compaq 6220/6230 notebook series that the company
says can offer more than nine hours of battery life when a
travel battery, which is sold separately, is added. The
notebook's form factor enables the travel battery to be
attached directly to the notebook so that it is
simultaneously operable with the integrated battery. The
notebook series, which offers Centrino CPU clock speeds
up to 2.13GHz and a memory capacity of up to 2.048GHz,
weighs in at 5.99 pounds when the travel battery is
attached.
In addition to the Intel Centrino processor that offers
SpeedStep power-saving controls and Intel's Display
Power Saving technology for the screen¡ªwhich
represents the most significant power-draining
component¡ªHP also says its patented NIC technology
helps to lower power consumption on a BIOS system level.
Nine hours is also a realistic benchmark for the HP
Compaq 6220/6230 notebook series when running typical
applications, such as accessing the Web and checking
email with the Centrino chipset's 802.11 capabilities, using
a word processor or other applications, the company says.
"Nine hours is a realistic test of what you would experience
while sitting in a conference room in a, God forbid, nine-
hour meeting," says Herman de Hoop, a worldwide
technical marketing manager for HP.
ASUS (www.asus.com; 888/678-3688) also represents an
OEM with a consistent notebook offering that at least keeps
the vendor in the battery longevity notebook race. The
company also relies on Intel's Centrino to regulate its latest
M3Np notebook's power-saving features at clock speeds of
1.30GHz to 1.70GHz. With ASUS' Power4 Gear power-
consumption technology, the company maintains the
M3Np can operate more than five hours. The M3Np
weighs about 5 pounds.
A 10-Hour-Plus Battery Life?
So what is in store for next-generation long-battery life
notebooks? OEMs will likely continue to rely on power-
saving capabilities of CPUs, as well as BIOS and other
system tweaks to reduce notebook power consumption in
future models, but no breakthroughs in battery
technologies are in store for the near term. It will likely be
several years before battery lives extend beyond 10 hours,
which will probably involve replacing power-hungry LCDs
with new display types, Locker says.
"I don't see battery life [extending to] up and beyond 10
hours [in the near future]. Inventing a new technology to
replace the panels with OLEDs, for example, would do it,
but that is four to five years out," Locker says. "However,
[OLEDs] will also probably represent the next breakthrough
on a system level
About the Author
For more information on laptop batteries please visit the laptop batteries resource center at http://www.laptob-battery-guide.info
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