Best option for battery life, on a budget.

Joe

My cousin does some volunteering in an extremely poor country. He's coming to France on Christmas and he's asking for my advice to buy a small laptop.

Here are some requirements:

Runs Word, Excel, a web browser. Nothing fancy here, not even media.
Due to very long power outages, he needs insane long hours of battery power
It should resists difficult(-ish) climate. He's in Guinea.
It's not for personal use, it's for the NGO he's with, so they're on a tight budget

I have the Eee Pad Transformer in mind, but before suggesting anything Android, I need to know: how's Android support for document publishing? Can it read and interact nicely with .doc? .xls?

I'm interested in suggestions for laptops, tablets or any kind of device, really. Remember it's not a fashion thing. He's not trying to get free CPU cycles. In other words: Is there a cheap device with outrageously good autonomy?

AvoK95

Well, the Eee Pad Transformer seems like a nice choice, especially for battery life. However, in my opinion, I don't thing Android is practical to use with .doc/,xls or any kind of document work.

I would get the Asus Vivo Tab. It comes with Windows RT (Windows 8 for ARM) but has the full functionality of any Windows OS. It is the exact "Windows copy" of the Eee Pad Transformer, and right now there's an offer on it by Asus where you get the keyboard/extra battery for free with the purchase (Usually they are sold separately for 200-$300) The Vivo costs a bit more than the Eee considering it has Windows on it which is like $60 for the license and that it's a quad core. There are tons of other cheaper options but I don't think there is anything else that can beat Asus's 16 hour battery life. There's also the Acer Aspire One AO756 which is only slightly more expensive than the Eee Pad, but at the cost of battery life. So you have to balance OS vs Price vs Battery life.

LifeEngineer

+1 on that!
With the extra keyboard you get double the battery life! ~16hrs!!!
And it's great with MS office!
However this only answers the first half your concern " Best option for battery life, on a budget." but not so much the 2nd part! ;-)

Joe

The Vivo looks great, but it's expensive (750euros without the keyboard). Is there something out there for half this price?

AvoK95

Well the Aspire One would be a great choice for half the price but it costs you battery life. The Aspire was the cheapest Windows 8 PC I could find on Newegg.com

Can you give me a website where you would buy stuff from ? So that I can search for something directly from there.

The Aspire One AO756 costs half (In Newegg anyway) But it will cost you battery life, dropping from 16 to 4 hours. Although, you can get an expanded battery pack for a bit more money. But don't count of having 10+ hours of battery life. It might nearly give you 2 or 3 more hours of usage.

*geeky thing* You can always make yourself a big battery pack with an inverter to boost the big 12V battery to 19V (Or how many volts the laptop takes) and have a *kinda* portable battery pack.

EDIT: I found Acer Aspire E1-531-B9604G50Mnks on Amazon for 425.23 EUR. But again, you will compromise battery life. But it will be much faster than any Atom or Celeron.

Joe

Here are the websites you could check:

Naturally, I'm not limited to these ones, but they are the cheapest options I know of.

The Aspire netbooks are not what I'm looking for. 4h of battery life is hardly any good for a netbook. The option of making my own battery pack seems interesting, although I don't think my cousin is super technical. Do you know of an online easy to follow tutorial to do this?

AvoK95

I found another Acer One, but this one has 8 hours of battery life. It's seems to be impossible to find something cheaper than an Asus Vivo with it's battery life. Looks like the only choice is to have a secondary power source, or he should keep an extra battery pack with him. If you can find something like an external battery, that would be epic. I did manage to find websites who had such batteries but they weren't available in France. Maybe a retail shop might have them ?

About the custom made external battery I found a video to show you show it's made

Conclusion: Best choice for the price is to buy a netbook and an external battery/power source. If the budget was raised or used items were an option, the Vivo would win hands down.

TPR0

Microsoft Office is coming for Android!

http://www.appy-geek.com/Web/ArticleWeb.aspx?regionid=1&articleid=5034237

rolf

I have an Acer Aspire 5733 bought it $400 in Lebanon about 3 month ago. It's battery lasts about 2.5 hours with Windows 7, light to moderate usage (browsing and such). You can buy a battery with double (actually a bit more then double) the capacity of the original one on ebay... I guess that would give me 5 hours, and they're rather cheap ($40-$50). It should double battery life in theory. I don't see why it wouldn't work. All numbers are approximative.

I also have seen, not so long ago (beginning of the month), someone with a weird tablet - something I never have seen before. It's a tablet attached to a keyboard. When attached together, it looks like a laptop. When detached from the keyboard, it looks like an iPad (touch screen). Both units contain a battery, so it's pretty weird, you can charge the keyboard alone while using the pad. When stuck together, the battery life is huge. I forgot the exact number, but it's at least 8 hours. Actually 12 if my memory serves me well. It's also not too expensive (but more than my laptop). Only problem: it only runs Android...!
PS: It was probably an Eee Pad Transformer.

AvoK95

rolf wroteI have an Acer Aspire 5733 bought it $400 in Lebanon about 3 month ago. It's battery lasts about 2.5 hours with Windows 7, light to moderate usage (browsing and such). You can buy a battery with double (actually a bit more then double) the capacity of the original one on ebay... I guess that would give me 5 hours, and they're rather cheap ($40-$50). It should double battery life in theory. I don't see why it wouldn't work. All numbers are approximative..

Actually, as I remember correctly your laptop was using a first generation 45nm i3, which draws more power. Newer generations use less and less power. A low end i7 used to draw about 120W now it draws 77W (Will be less for laptops)

The lower the specs go, the more the battery will last, as it will draw less power. Since he won't be anything more than word processing, an Atom or a Celeron will be pretty much all he would need. The exact same laptop as you have with a Celeron processor would last more than 4 hours. With double battery, it doesn't necessarily give you double the duration. I once did an experiment on an HP dv7 i3 (Same i3 as yours) and single battery lasted about 3 hours and as for double it lasted about 4.5 hours.

rolf wroteI also have seen, not so long ago (beginning of the month), someone with weird tablet - something I never have seen before. It's a tablet attached to a keyboard. When attached together, it looks like a laptop. When detached from the keyboard, it looks like an iPad (touch screen). Both units contain a battery, so it's pretty weird, you can charge the keyboard alone while using the pad. When stuck together, the battery life is huge. I forgot the exact number, but it's at least 8 hours. Actually 12 if my memory serves me well. It's also not too expensive (but more than my laptop). Only problem: it only runs Android...!
PS: That is probably the Eee Pad Transformer TF101, that someone mentioned above

Yup that is the Transformer :P

@rahmu, You are in luck! as TPRO posted, MS Office is coming on Android and iOS ! So I guess he could just get an Eee Pad Transformer and install Office on it and he'll be on his way :D

rolf

AvoK95 wroteWith double battery, it doesn't necessarily give you double the duration

Yes, I considered that, but the battery I'm talking about is actually more then double the capacity. I forgot the details, though.

yasamoka

@rolf: yes, but if the replacement battery is not double the size, then it won't be double the capacity, as there is only so much charge a lithium battery could hold (it's a chemical limit, charge/kg). When an unofficial, 3rd-party battery is the same size, let's say, and actually offers more capacity (has higher-than-official rating, comes close to, or matches its own rating), be sure to avoid this battery. The walls around the lithium cells would be thin and cheaply constructed. The battery faces a high chance of explosion if faced with pressure (or even normal operation), and heat is its enemy. I think we all don't like lithium batteries exploding. It doesn't look or feel nice.

Furthermore, be careful about shipping batteries from anywhere outside Lebanon. It's on the list of banned items, and now you know why.