Solved Business Laptop focused at very long Batteryruntime

[tinfoil-hat]

Hi there, I am a big fan of the Thinkpad X220 / Thinkpad X230. Their i5 is enough computing power for me. But with the years, I am thinking of getting another Laptop. They should have the following Specs:
Batterylife (most important)
Can be used or refurbished
some 6th-8th gen Intel Core i5 or similar
Business Grade build
nice keyboard (for lots of typing)
16GB RAM (can be extended my me)
NVMe SSD (can be replaced by me)
Onboard Graphic
Bonuspoint for Dockingstation capabillity

I have a laptop in Mind, but I am interested in your thoughts

- thanks, tinfoil-hat

 

[osprey]

The last battery tests that I read about online suggested that the macbooks outstrip nearly all others in battery life. It's possible to run the macbook OSs in a similar way to linux. I can't say if you install linux on a macbook that it would have the same battery life, but if it's battery life versus linux, I think the macbook would win. Some reports top the 20 hour mark for macbooks, whereas my thinkpad T15 Gen 2 does about 6 hours.

 

[MikeWalsh]

To my way of thinking, the laptop line that probably ticks the biggest number of those boxes would have to be the Latitudes, from Dell.

In addition to an HP desktop rig, I also run a good condition, pre-owned 2007-8 era Latitiude D630. Core2Duo, 4 GB RAM, and an onboard Nvidia Quadro mobile GPU with its own dedicated 256 MB of VRAM. Even way back then, the Latitudes had a docking station available.....along with auto-sensing screen brightness, manually-triggered search & auto-connection to all locally available wifi networks, AND the option of its own, onboard cellular broadband card if desired.

The Latitude range is still going strong some 16 years later. I can only guess at what "goodies" the current models have added to that already impressive list.....though I know that i5s/i7s/i9s and 16 or 32 GB RAM are definitely among them.

Just my two-penn'orth, FWIW.


Mike.

 

[Thunderpants]

Lenovo Thinkpads are also built to last and great value if bought renewed or refurbished. Bought an ex-corporate 'renewed' Lenovo T480 with an 8th gen i5, 8GB and 256GB SSD for under 300 GBP last year. Added an extra 8GB of used Samsung RAM. It's proved robust with a decent keyboard and fast enough for most things except hi-end gaming. Battery lasts about 8 hours per charge with annoying power saving features disabled.

 

[sphen]

I have been using MacBooks and macOS for a long time. One reason is battery life - I could take notes at conferences from morning to late at night. It helps to be careful about screen brightness and not running "battery-hog" applications like Microsoft Word.

The newer ARM-based MacBook (M1, M2) are supposed to be even better with battery life, but I still use an older 2016 Intel MacBook Pro.

Macs are not the be-all and end-all of laptops, but they have many qualities that I appreciate. Mine is reaching the end of the line, and I am not happy about having to decide whether to move to the ARM Macs or find something else. I liked the Intel Macs because they boot nearly any x86 operating system. If I move to the new Macs, my activated/licensed Windows virtual machines will not run on them, for example.

 

[tinfoil-hat]

Hi, maybe some more Laptops can be suggested

The last battery tests that I read about online suggested that the macbooks outstrip nearly all others in battery life. It's possible to run the macbook OSs in a similar way to linux. I can't say if you install linux on a macbook that it would have the same battery life, but if it's battery life versus linux, I think the macbook would win. Some reports top the 20 hour mark for macbooks, whereas my thinkpad T15 Gen 2 does about 6 hours.

can you suggest a Macbook model please?

 

[tinfoil-hat]

To my way of thinking, the laptop line that probably ticks the biggest number of those boxes would have to be the Latitudes, from Dell.

In addition to an HP desktop rig, I also run a good condition, pre-owned 2007-8 era Latitiude D630. Core2Duo, 4 GB RAM, and an onboard Nvidia Quadro mobile GPU with its own dedicated 256 MB of VRAM. Even way back then, the Latitudes had a docking station available.....along with auto-sensing screen brightness, manually-triggered search & auto-connection to all locally available wifi networks, AND the option of its own, onboard cellular broadband card if desired.

The Latitude range is still going strong some 16 years later. I can only guess at what "goodies" the current models have added to that already impressive list.....though I know that i5s/i7s/i9s and 16 or 32 GB RAM are definitely among them.

Just my two-penn'orth, FWIW.


Mike.

I bought an Dell Latitude, and was very disapointed in the Battery life (it ran about 4 hours)

 

[osprey]

Hi, maybe some more Laptops can be suggested

can you suggest a Macbook model please?

My own latest experience was with the Macbook Air, a 2020 intel model which could last around 12 to 14 hours with normal browsing, no heavy compiling nor heavy graphics work. My current Lenovo, as mentioned, does about 6 hours.

I've kept reading reviews of the new arm model macbooks, and the battery life reported is consistently higher going up to around 20 hours, with Apple themselves claiming 22 hours.

The best I can recommend is to read the reviews from various places, from more established media and from social media, and then measure what you personally wish for against what is being offered. There's so much online reviewing of macs, especially the m1 and m2 arm models, it's overwhelming. Here's a relatively simple comparison of battery life on macbook pros from a well qualified journalist:

We tested 5 MacBooks in 2023 — this one has the best battery life

Want a MacBook? Make sure you get the longest-lasting one!

www.laptopmag.com

but it's only one of numerous such articles.

It's worth noting that the macbook pros include a fan which the macbook airs do not, and so the macbook airs have a throttling mechanism when the machine heats up to a certain point. The pro models with the fan are technically superior in my view on this matter, though some reviewers have said they couldn't really notice any effects from the throttling. YMMV.

 

[KGIII]

I've kept reading reviews of the new arm model macbooks, and the battery life reported is consistently higher going up to around 20 hours, with Apple themselves claiming 22 hours.

Remember, the new CPUs in the new Macs can not (yet) run Linux natively. It's getting closer, and I think some of 6.8 is supposed to have some code in it, but it's not quite there yet.

When it does get there, I'm probably going to check it out. I hear great things about them and, while MacOS is a Unix, I'm only going to use Linux on the device.

 

[tinfoil-hat]

My own latest experience was with the Macbook Air, a 2020 intel model which could last around 12 to 14 hours with normal browsing, no heavy compiling nor heavy graphics work. My current Lenovo, as mentioned, does about 6 hours.

I've kept reading reviews of the new arm model macbooks, and the battery life reported is consistently higher going up to around 20 hours, with Apple themselves claiming 22 hours.

The best I can recommend is to read the reviews from various places, from more established media and from social media, and then measure what you personally wish for against what is being offered. There's so much online reviewing of macs, especially the m1 and m2 arm models, it's overwhelming. Here's a relatively simple comparison of battery life on macbook pros from a well qualified journalist:

We tested 5 MacBooks in 2023 — this one has the best battery life

Want a MacBook? Make sure you get the longest-lasting one!

www.laptopmag.com

but it's only one of numerous such articles.

It's worth noting that the macbook pros include a fan which the macbook airs do not, and so the macbook airs have a throttling mechanism when the machine heats up to a certain point. The pro models with the fan are technically superior in my view on this matter, though some reviewers have said they couldn't really notice any effects from the throttling. YMMV.

Looks neat, but I should have set a price range. I'd like to pay up to ~350€ (used) and get the best battery life for this money

 

[osprey]

Remember, the new CPUs in the new Macs can not (yet) run Linux natively. It's getting closer, and I think some of 6.8 is supposed to have some code in it, but it's not quite there yet.

When it does get there, I'm probably going to check it out. I hear great things about them and, while MacOS is a Unix, I'm only going to use Linux on the device.

Yes, this may be a critical consideration. In my own case, I ran the macbook air in a mode that simulated linux using the configurations that I used on my linux machines replicated as closely as possible on the mac. That involved installing the compiling toolchain, and using homebrew as a repo much like the debian repos on my other machines. There was very little unavailable in homebrew, and whatever wasn't available was generally compilable. Looking at the screen on the mac I used, one would have been hard-pressed to differentiate it from a linux machine, as was evident from the comments of colleagues who saw it.

 

[KGIII]

Yes, this may be a critical consideration.

Every now and then I check on the progress and I keep seeing 'soon'. I'm sure it'll be fully natively supported eventually. I'm a bit disappointed that Apple hasn't been a bit more cooperative, but here we are. They really don't have much motivation to cooperate, I suppose. I mean, I guess some stuff will trickle back to BSD-land and they might take advantage of that? Maybe?

I don't imagine they sell all that much hardware to people who intend to use it for Linux. That's likely to be a tiny percent of a percent... It's bound to be less than a rounding error and so insignificant that they don't even bother to factor it in. The folks buying these devices are doing so because they plan on remaining in the Apple ecosystem.

Entirely unrelated, a few years back I bought a Macbook Air for use with Linux. It was right near the holiday season and my daughter decided she liked it more than I did, so I never got to even open the box it came in. I meant to buy another one but I never got to it.

 

[tinfoil-hat]

There must be a busniness laptop for ~300€ with 6< h battery life that runs linux

 

[tinfoil-hat]

I think the Lenovo Thinkpad x260 is the solution for me (if you can trust this review)

Lenovo X260 Laptop Review: Insanely Long Battery Life

If you liked Lenovo's X250 laptop, you'll love its newer X260 model. All the best things about the X250 are back in Lenovo's X260, including…

www.slashgear.com