<p>How much battery life should I be aiming for? I know that's incredibly vague, but I want a laptop with a discrete graphics card for some light gaming and video-intensive software. I've never owned a laptop before, and college life will obviously be different. Higher-end models I've looked at get somewhere around 2-2.5 hours, which I'm worried is not enough. I don't figure I'll be on the move too much, but I have a triple dorm and don't want to feel tied down to the wall or always on the search for a wall socket.</p>
<p>the new macbook pros have built in batteries with 7 hours of battery life. I have one and i can assure you, they get are capable of getting at least 7 hours on a charge! Its truly amazing!</p>
<p>I’m not saying there aren’t PCs with equally high battery life (I’m not too familiar with them, so I don’t know), but my MacBook Pro gets over 7 hours of battery life. And that’s not just idle use. I have Wi-Fi on, browsing the web, with music playing softly in the background. (I did turn Bluetooth off, as I don’t use it, and also turned off the keyboard backlight and set screen brightness to 50%. But for mid-day indoor use, neither of those make much of a difference to the user.)</p>
<p>The battery is non-user-replaceable (that’s how they were able to make it so much bigger), but I don’t know any college students who actually keep a second battery handy/charged at all times anyways. (Maybe the students with 2.5 hour battery life do 
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