Re: Can a laptop play a whole DVD on one charge?

Donny wrote:
Hi there,

My wife wants a portable DVD player for Christmas, to use in the car and on aeroplanes. I thought they were about £200 ($400), and that some laptops are going for £300, so that gave me the idea that I could get a laptop instead. (I realised afterwards that there are some much cheaper DVD players out there.) She currently uses a Dell Latitude CS that I got from work, which is about 8 years old and _very_ slow, so it's worth getting one I think.

What I'm not sure about -- since I've never owned a new laptop -- is whether it is possible to watch a DVD on a laptop without recharging. I've spent ages looking around but there are very few shopping sites that can filter laptop searches by battery life.

All laptops seem to state at least 2.5 hours battery life, but I'm guessing this is not true if the DVD is spinning the whole time -- and I realise these things degrade over time.

So, is it possible to play a 2 hour movie on a new 2.5 hour laptop? If not, what is a good choice model for a longer battery life?

Lastly, what is a good website for comparing all current models, filterable by battery-life?

Thanks in advance,
Donny

P.S. I'd like to get one with Vista Home Premium (rather than Basic, so that it has the Media Centre stuff.)

Personal TP-R31, year-old battery, wireless "radio" OFF, screen brightness set at midway point. IBM DVD player application--very vanilla: 2+20. (usually a whole movie followed by 10-15 minutes to fill in an expense spread***.)

Same machine but using XP's media player, just under two hours.

Newer, T42 runs a bit longer but I go into Task Manager and stop some of the nuisance processes (MSM etc.) that tend to eat battery through polling and paging on the HDD.

OTOH, training the 'better-half' in using Task Manager might not be your cup of tea. <g>

As far as Vista is concerned, it's got more stuff running in the background than XP. The HDD in my fairly new HP is shelved, waiting for MS to produce a Service Pack.

--
pj
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