I generally have it plugged in. My old work ThinkPad A21 had a battery life when new of just over two hours (the screen was a hog). After four years, one battery was down to about 1/2 hour and the other was about 1:15.
Haven't seen anything like that on this ThinkPad. They do recommend a cycle or two when it's new.
This one is plugged in pretty much all the time too. I bought it last April and the battery cycle count is only 34. Batteries are expensive.
Yeah, and their design engineers seem to have lost the art of power efficiency. My old Compaq Contura was the last one that I'd consider efficient. 5-6 hours on a NiCd. The laptop case cracked all around from too much flying and the battery is dead by now. But if I had my druthers I'd resurrect it with 10 NiMH AA cells, giving it more capacity than the old battery ever had. Just imagine, a whole day on one charge, with
That would almost require tearing down and rebuilding the house. Tons of firestops, it was quite over-engineered (which I consider a good thing).
Same here. Engineer and machinist at a client got sick. Very sick. So I flew home and returned one more time to finish the project. Came home again, crashed into the pillows and didn't get out of bed for almost a week. At times the ceiling seemed to spin. It was bad. Of course this was during the long freeze and my wife had to do the wood stove hauling and loading all by herself. Then I got better but in the meantime must had passed the virus on to my wife :-(
Do you use a lot of other energy to heat? If not your house must be in a thick box of styrofoam or maybe you live on a tropical island ;-)
It's pretty amazing, isn't it, that there doesn't seem to be any appreciable market for mobile computers that people would use to get some *actual* work done. After all, 99% of the time that 3GHz CPU thing just idles while waiting for user input, unless you play games, watch movies or rip DVDs.
I'd love to see a laptop that you could "down-clock" to a few hundred MHz to milk a few dozen hours extra out of the batteries. Of course this would virtually freeze up any modern office suite, and the art of using a simple ASCII editor for writing texts seems to be a forgotten one.
I've recently used EAGLE on a 133 MHz Pentium. There's no real difference to the 3GHz CPU unless you ratsnest polygons (or use the autorouter, but who does that anyway).
robert
AFAIR this Contura actually throttled back to a few MHz. And no, the Office package did not crash. I did my book keeping on it while traveling so I'd have noticed ;-)
Then one day the bottom literally fell out. When lifting the laptop to put it away because of serious turbulence during a flight the battery and the HD cover plate were still in my lap. I discovered a crack around the whole perimeter of the case. It was duct tape time :-(
Eagle runs just fine one one of these clunkers here. "Only" 64MB of RAM.
A computer designer always does the design in theory - the numbers - and again in prototype - the experiemental evidence. Both are necessary to learn. From learning, a computer case designer then oversized the cooling. One 80 mm chassis fan is more than sufficient. Do the numbers yourself. Its simple multiplication. One
80 mm chassis fan is more than sufficient cooling. Every informed computer assembler would know these numbers. Too many, instead, are mocked by Tim Allen's joke - "More power".Dust problems in normal environments are symptoms of too much airflow. We add a second fan. How much does the second fan reduce chassis temperatures? Notice how trivial that temperature is. And yet others somehow know only by feeling - and they install "More fans". Then they recommend quarterly vacuum sessions in the shop. Then replacable filters. Then electrostatic dust collectors in the room. Then .... all because they could not do simple arithmetic or even measure how much nothing that second fan added. But they know because "More Power" is always a solution.
Firestops? I don't want any of them blocking my exit! ;-)
That sounds like the time I had Mono. I came home from college registration on a Wednesday and didn't get out of bed until the following Tuesday.
I was in the hospital (AFib) for three days around St. Valentines day (my wife's boss cleared the 36" of snow from our driveway). They're trying to get the anticoagulation meds right then, from what I can gather, they're going to play with electricity. The doctors here don't seem to like to divulge any plans, so who knows?
Nah, Lazy. The only time I run the thing is when it's *really* cold and stays cold for a while. Last year it never got cold enough to bother. The year before we had a really cold January so I used a bit. Before this year there was no one home from 7:00AM to 7:00PMish so lighting the thing didn't pay during the week. This year I'm at home all day and wanted to burn as much of the left over wood as possible (it's "free").
TO be fair, it's not only the power engineers. Even "mobile" processors suck a lot of power. Large displays and all the other toys aren't free either. This ThinkPad T60 will go at least three hours playing a DVD with the screen on maximum brightness. I don't consider that too bad.
I do like the idea of AA NiCDs though. CHEAP! ...though heavy.
Yeah, that's the point: Cheap. Lots of people are talking about a low cost laptop for the masses and for developing countries. AFAICT all talk so far. Why don't they realize the obvious? Use nothing but commonly available mass market parts wherever possible. Who cares about weight when you can replace the energy source of the laptop for under $20 and, best of all, buy the replacements at the local supermarket.
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Fella, you're really heavy on the theory, waaay too light on actual real-world experience.
If you blow air INTO a chassis you have a chance of filtering the air at the intake
If you blow air OUT of a chassis, every llttle gap, unfilled screw hole, floppy disk slot, CD drive slot, and poorly sealing cd drive tray will let in dust.
In theory, maybe. But fans tend to blow air in a particular direction, but they all suck equally. (ha). So if a fan happens to blow onto a CPU heatr sink, the heat sink will be substantially cooler than if the fan just sucked in general.
All fans DON'T "suck equally".
Squirrel cage blowers are much more efficient than conventional "fans".
...Jim Thompson
Me too. All I have is oxy-acetelyene and a crappy little buzz box my dad used to use.
I wear shorts year round, but I'm in Central Florida, and I'm heat intolerant.
My '66 GTO was bright red, had the soft shell doors and ran over 400 HP, yet it gave about 20 MPG while towing a U-Haul trailer at 70+ MPH on the Interstate from Alabama to Ohio. :) I got better gas mileage with it than I do out of a beat up '87 Ford Ranger with a 4 cylinder & automatic, while running empty.
Yep, unfortunately the industry doesn't make high compression engines anymore. I had an Audi (the big one, station wagon) and it gave me 35mpg if I didn't push it past 80mph and kept it in overdrive. Stick shift, of course. 10.5:1 compression ratio. With "new and improved" engines you are lucky to have 8.5:1 and that doesn't allow a good efficiency.
BTW this Audi was still about 25mpg when flooring it and cruising between 110-115mph. In Germany I could do that for hours on end when I chose to hit the autobahn while soccer games were on. There were stretches south of Cologne where I had all three lanes to myself.
Only if you don't empty the bit bucket every week.
"Ancient_Hacker" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@s48g2000cws.googlegroups.com:
It sure does matter whether you suck air out or blow it in,as the cases have been designed with the fans at the TOP of the case,and *heat rises*. Reverse the airflow,and the lower components will not get the airflow.
Maybe if you took off the left side panel and mounted your filtered fans near the bottom of it,blowing in,then your intake of dust would stop. Then you have to contend with filter maintenance. Filters reduce airflow,and clogged filters even more.
Yeah,there you go;mount a couple of thin 12VDC fans on the lower part of the case,on the inside,mount two metal channels for a small fiberglass furnace filter to slide into,on the outside of the case,use a long enough fan power cable to allow removal of the side panel for accessing the inside.You still end up with a thin case profile,the filter is easily accessible for service,too. Leave the PS fan and the optional case fan to suck out. There still will be enough overpressure to eliminate intake of dust from other openings. Those openings will leak some air out instead.
Consider this my patent on the idea. B-)
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net:
I have a Bernz-O-Matic oxy-MAPP gas torch,but it's not appropriate for aluminum welding.
Joerg wrote in news:htiJh.7360$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net:
IIRC,my Integra GSR is 11:1,uses premium gas. 170HP at an ungodly RPM. I've only revved it to 8000 RPM a few times.... B-)
Yes.
Although my Q45...
4,494 cc 4.5 liters V 8 front engine with 93 mm bore, 82.7 mm stroke, 10.5 compression ratio, double overhead cam, variable valve timing/camshaft and four valves per cylinder VK4519.5MPG at 100MPH ;-)
...Jim Thompson
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