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The other main improvement in the past 10 years is the power draw. You can get more than 10 hours of battery life in a machine that weighs less than 3 lbs. That

The other main improvement in the past 10 years is the power draw. You can get more than 10 hours of battery life in a machine that weighs less than 3 lbs. That would have been unthinkable a decade ago. CPU improvements are only part of the story in making that happen but the are certainly far ahead of where things were in the not so distant past.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
10 hour battery life was achievable 15 years ago on Pentium M provided you under-volted, under-clocked, and had a high capacity battery.
- edvinbesic 6y ago
  How far does this goalpost go?
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    The point is that the technology for long life laptops has been ready for a long time. It's just that Intel marketing calls all the shots and they only wanted to sell multicore space heaters with space heater memory to sweeten the deal. With this burden on chipset side, it was impossible to compensate with extra amp hours and maintain portable weight.
    - rualca 6y ago
      > The point is that the technology for long life laptops has been ready for a long time. You're desperately moving the goal post to ridiculous places. It's like claiming that walking on the moon is supposed to be considered normal just because the technology has been ready for a long time. That claim is irrelevant, isn't it? I mean, what good does a "technically it's possible" claim do if a) no, it's clearly not possible outside exceptionally rare circumstances b) the average consumer device is way behind any of those outlandish claims.
- rualca 6y ago
  > (...) provided you under-volted, under-clocked, and had a high capacity battery. The fact alone that you're talking about using/adding a nonstandard and exceptional battery is more than enough to throw out that claim.
Dylan16807 6y ago
If you took the small 2010 macbook air and doubled the size of its battery you'd be extremely close to 10 hours and 3 pounds, so I wouldn't go with "unthinkable".

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago

10 hour battery life was achievable 15 years ago on Pentium M provided you under-volted, under-clocked, and had a high capacity battery.

edvinbesic 6y ago
How far does this goalpost go?
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  The point is that the technology for long life laptops has been ready for a long time. It's just that Intel marketing calls all the shots and they only wanted to sell multicore space heaters with space heater memory to sweeten the deal. With this burden on chipset side, it was impossible to compensate with extra amp hours and maintain portable weight.
  - rualca 6y ago
    > The point is that the technology for long life laptops has been ready for a long time. You're desperately moving the goal post to ridiculous places. It's like claiming that walking on the moon is supposed to be considered normal just because the technology has been ready for a long time. That claim is irrelevant, isn't it? I mean, what good does a "technically it's possible" claim do if a) no, it's clearly not possible outside exceptionally rare circumstances b) the average consumer device is way behind any of those outlandish claims.
rualca 6y ago
> (...) provided you under-volted, under-clocked, and had a high capacity battery. The fact alone that you're talking about using/adding a nonstandard and exceptional battery is more than enough to throw out that claim.

Dylan16807 6y ago

If you took the small 2010 macbook air and doubled the size of its battery you'd be extremely close to 10 hours and 3 pounds, so I wouldn't go with "unthinkable".