<p>This may seem like a kind of stupid question, but I'm looking at laptops to bring to Cal right now and wondering how important battery life is. I'd like to have a Sony VAIO, but the model I'm looking at can only go for a little over an hour without being plugged in.</p>
<p>So, I was wondering if any current students could tell me whether there's outlets in the classrooms and lecture halls and how often they really use the battery alone? </p>
<p>Thanks so much!</p>
<p>There are outlets often at the sides or the back. There is sometimes a projector block near the center of the back of the room that usually holds some outlets. In general its kind of annoying to have to use an outlet since people can often trip over them. I would suggest getting something with at least 2 hours battery life so your computer will last an entire tuesday/thursday lecture. I got one with 4.5 hours battery life because I often have 3 hour blocks of lectures sequentially.</p>
<p>Thank you, Shiboing Boing! I'll keep that in mind.</p>
<p>I just purchased a six hour (8-cell) battery for my laptop. Absolutely love it. Highly recommend buying one instead of trying to plug it in somewhere in the classroom. I did the whole plugging-it-into-the-wall thing at my CC, and it worked sometimes, but overall, it was just an unnecessary hassle.</p>
<p>I have a laptop that last about 2:30-3hrs depending on what I'm doing. But I'm going to get an extra 6-cell battery and swap out the DVD drive for the battery when I'm in class.</p>
<p>Yeah, I'm trying to get a laptop with a longer battery life, but apparently everything that's advertised as 5.5 hours actually lasts 3 at the very most . And any laptop that actually lasts more than four hours is over $2,000. Blah.</p>
<p>I guess I'll do the swapping-battery thing too.</p>
<p>Any laptop with a 9-cell/80-85 WHr battery will last upwards of 4 hours if you make sure the laptop's components don't suck up power (such as staying away from laptops with high-end, 85 watt graphics cards, and getting a very good LCD so that it will be easily visible even on lower brightness settings). Dell's loaded Inspiron E1705 can push 3.5 hours if you don't run any heavy-duty apps.</p>
<p>I have a dell laptop--very small (inspiron 300m--weights about 3 lbs)--and I just bought an eight cell replacement battery (like I mentioned in my last post) and when I adjusted the settings for maximum battery usage, it lasts for almost six hours. The battery was only $200 so....yeah, it's not exactly cheap, but I believe it's definitely worth the investment.</p>