On 16/08/2017 08:08, Folderol wrote:
> The field engineers laptops have*much*  better battery life than the two that
> are teathered in the office.

I've seen the same where I work. Nowadays we all have laptops instead of
desktops etc. but they are really used to run MS Office (spit), PDF
viewers and as X/RDP terminals onto the compute farms. Until relatively
recent times the laptops that were used a lot in the meeting/conference
rooms on battery had better battery life that many machines that were
plugged into a docking station all their life.

My latest laptop (Dell e7450 Ultrabook) does have a smarter charger. It
doesn't immediately rush to charge the battery to 100% as soon as you
dock it. Quite often I've seen it indicating 90% charge and running from
the AC supply. Only when it's been discharged to nearer 80% does it then
charge it back to 100%. There's some power management dashboard software
where you can tweak these settings.

Mine is 3yr 2months old and due for replacement in 4 months. If I run in
on battery power doing lightweight tasks (browsing, email, X/RDP to the
farms etc.) then it will last for over 8 hours still. All the people
with e7450s are still on the original batteries. In past times,  I'd
have expected 30% of them to have needed a replacement battery after 2
years.

Is it better battery design or smarter charging circuity? Who knows.
It's bijou and compact and goes like the clappers when you need it to.
The only downside is the 1920x1200 screen is small and whilst I don't
need glasses to use a 24in monitor, I can't see a thing on this without
them.

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