3 ms·

Especially in a post-COVID world where home offices are more common and possibly with even less travel, I think battery life is quite overrated for many people.

by macksd 6y ago

Especially in a post-COVID world where home offices are more common and possibly with even less travel, I think battery life is quite overrated for many people. I have a Serval Workstation (i.e. high-power laptop) from System76 and absolutely love it. The battery doesn't last very long especially if I'm doing heavy-lifting on the GPU, but I very rarely go somewhere I can't plug in. I need to be able to fold up my "workstation" and take it with me, sure. But I can work from the airport, many planes, from my couch, from most coffee shops, etc. I just have to plug in when I get there. I would rather plug in when I get somewhere and have a much more powerful machine at my desk.

baybal2 6y ago
Indeed, LG's 32wh battery laptop rated at 23 hours instantly comes to mind. For Intel based laptops built in the last 10 years basically the only thing making a difference in battery life for laptops with same CPU is screen, and battery. Everything else is almost the same everywhere. NVME SSD + WiFi will uniformly eat 2W. Power conversion will also eat at to 500-800mW. All other peripherals combined will unlikely to eat more than 1 watt, with exception of 1GB ethernet if working full speed.
officeplant 6y ago
For me battery life means I can go outside somewhere to get some fresh air/inspiration (hobby computer music production). It doesn't frustrate me to have to take the power brick along, but it is nice when I can replace that weight in my bag with a small midi controller.
acdha 6y ago
Battery life is a proxy for somethings you do care about: how often does the fan come on and when does thermal throttling impact performance notably? If you don't travel, a desktop will cost less, last longer, and do more than a laptop — in part because the system won't be throttling. I spent about 20 years being laptop-only and went back to a desktop recently after realizing that it'd literally been years since I'd had any significant amount of on-the-go work which I couldn't do on my phone.
- samatman 6y ago
  I routinely travel! From my desk, to my easy chair, to my bed, and back again. Not hard on my battery (two of those have charge cables handy) but difficult to pull off with a desktop. Now that you mention it, it's been more than a year since my laptop has left my home. Ouch.
  - acdha 6y ago
    FWIW, I found that losing that tended to remove low-productivity time - I do work at my desk and call it a day, whereas it was a little too easy to be hunched on the couch surfing HN. If I really want to do something, walking over to the desktop only takes a few seconds. Granted, becoming a parent also meant that things like watching a movie are “haha, I’m going to sleep” now, too.
    - samatman 6y ago
      Not me, I get a lot of work done in bed, probably more than half. The easy chair is not a productive setting, I grant you. Lately I prefer to pick up the kindle or tablet for a short break from the desk, and this is probably more conducive to work than switching from "getting things done" to "browsing HN/Twitter" on the same machine. I use a sit/stand desk but barely ever sit at it, so fifteen minutes of down time here and there helps.

by macksd 6y ago

baybal2 6y ago

Indeed, LG's 32wh battery laptop rated at 23 hours instantly comes to mind. For Intel based laptops built in the last 10 years basically the only thing making a difference in battery life for laptops with same CPU is screen, and battery. Everything else is almost the same everywhere. NVME SSD + WiFi will uniformly eat 2W. Power conversion will also eat at to 500-800mW. All other peripherals combined will unlikely to eat more than 1 watt, with exception of 1GB ethernet if working full speed.

officeplant 6y ago

For me battery life means I can go outside somewhere to get some fresh air/inspiration (hobby computer music production). It doesn't frustrate me to have to take the power brick along, but it is nice when I can replace that weight in my bag with a small midi controller.

acdha 6y ago

Battery life is a proxy for somethings you do care about: how often does the fan come on and when does thermal throttling impact performance notably? If you don't travel, a desktop will cost less, last longer, and do more than a laptop — in part because the system won't be throttling. I spent about 20 years being laptop-only and went back to a desktop recently after realizing that it'd literally been years since I'd had any significant amount of on-the-go work which I couldn't do on my phone.

samatman 6y ago
I routinely travel! From my desk, to my easy chair, to my bed, and back again. Not hard on my battery (two of those have charge cables handy) but difficult to pull off with a desktop. Now that you mention it, it's been more than a year since my laptop has left my home. Ouch.
- acdha 6y ago
  FWIW, I found that losing that tended to remove low-productivity time - I do work at my desk and call it a day, whereas it was a little too easy to be hunched on the couch surfing HN. If I really want to do something, walking over to the desktop only takes a few seconds. Granted, becoming a parent also meant that things like watching a movie are “haha, I’m going to sleep” now, too.
  - samatman 6y ago
    Not me, I get a lot of work done in bed, probably more than half. The easy chair is not a productive setting, I grant you. Lately I prefer to pick up the kindle or tablet for a short break from the desk, and this is probably more conducive to work than switching from "getting things done" to "browsing HN/Twitter" on the same machine. I use a sit/stand desk but barely ever sit at it, so fifteen minutes of down time here and there helps.