Round 5: Battery life
Will the laptop last until you land?
Anyone who's been on a cross-country flight knows the desperation that comes after your laptop battery dies: suddenly your activity choices consist of watching a tepid in-flight movie or flipping though the SkyMall catalog. We timed how long the MacBook Pro's and Acer TravelMate 8200's batteries lasted while playing a DVD movie with all sleep options and networking, including
wireless, disabled. On the MacBook Pro, screen brightness was lowered to half and the power management was set at Better Battery Life. The TravelMate 8200's screen brightness was adjusted to 60cd/m 2 to 70cd/m 2 and, it was set to run in Windows XP's Portable/Laptop power scheme. If the movie ended before the battery died, we started it again from the beginning.
DVD battery life(Longer bars indicate a longer battery life)
Acer TravelMate 8200 Intel Core Duo T2500 2GHz (Tested 3/06)
192
MacBook Pro Core Duo-2GHz (OS 10.4.6) (Tested 4/06)
184
Winner: By a nose, the Acer TravelMate 8200, which held out 8 minutes longer than the MacBook Pro.
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Apple |
X |
X |
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Acer |
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X |
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X |
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On to round 6
