Battery Life

Battery life is as important as performance for a mobile computer system. Therefore, we paid special attention to measuring this parameter under several typical types of workload. The tests were performed in MobileMark2007 testing suite. Note that all battery life tests were performed with maximum screen brightness and with StandBy and Hibernate modes disabled.

The first scenario that we involved for our battery life testing purposes emulated user’s common work in typical office applications.

The record here belongs to Lenovo Thinkpad T61. This mobile computer based on Santa Rosa platform managed to run on battery for almost 3 hours. Toshiba Satellite A100-906 on the old Napa Refresh platform with the battery of almost the same capacity lasted 37 minutes less. However, the new Centrino Duo owes this victory not only to enhanced power-saving technologies. Toshiba laptop is equipped with a less economical graphics card than Lenovo Thinkpad T61.

However, we shouldn’t underestimate the advantages of the new platform here. We could see how economical Santa Rosa actually was from the results shown by Asus A8Sc also. It features a battery with 25% smaller capacity, but runs on it for about the same time as Toshiba Satellite A100-906 – a little over 2 hours.

The second scenario used in our test session emulated the use of mobile computers for video playback. To be more exact, this test demonstrates how long the notebooks could run on battery during DVD movie playback with IntelVideo WinDVD player.

The overall picture remains the same. The best result belongs to Lenovo Thinkpad T61, as we could watch the DVD on it for 2 hours and 18 minutes. Asus A8Sc and Toshiba Satellite A100-906 also showed very similar results: a little over 2 hours.

The third experiment implied measuring the notebooks battery life during text reading. We used Adobe Acrobat Reader to display some text on the notebook screen.

This type of workload eats the lest power, so our testing participants demonstrated the maximum battery life. Lenovo Thinkpad T61 on Santa Rosa platform worked for 3 hours and 17 minutes. Asus A8Sc based on the same platform but featuring less capacious battery run for 2 hours and 18 minutes. The Toshiba Satellite A100-906 representing older Napa Refresh platform demonstrated average result of 2 hours and 32 minutes, thanks to the battery of the same capacity as the one of the leader.