Asus Promises 12-Hour Battery Life In New High-End Laptop

Asus' new high-end laptop could finally be the traveler's best accoutrement, touting twelve-hour battery life thanks to intelligent, second-by-second switching between the two GPUs and automatic, on-the-fly re-clocking of the Intel Core i7 CPU. All this also comes in with a price tag of just over $1,000. "ASUS's solution is different because it's user-transparent; even a novice user will get the fullest possible benefit because the laptop itself is deciding when to switch. The same principle applies to the dynamic CPU clocking. ASUS includes a desktop widget to track CPU clock speed. While using the UL80JT, I could see it moving up and down with what I did; up with program openings and CPU-intensive processes, and way down at idle. Between the GPU switching, dynamic clocking, and ASUS's other power management features, the UL80JT manages to consume less than half as much power as the unibody Macbook while browsing."

How good/bad is their acpi implementation?

[starbugs]

Promising 12 battery life is one thing.
Actually delivering acpi that is not crap is another.

I guess we'll wait and see.

User-transparent

[TheMeuge]

ASUS's solution is different because it's user-transparent; even a novice user will get the fullest possible benefit because the laptop itself is deciding when to switch. The same principle applies to the dynamic CPU clocking.

So what they mean is that the laptop will be deciding when it should be fast or slow, with no input from the user? How's this different than the gazillion power management settings we have now (except switching between GPUs of course)?

I am also not sure I like the sentiment of "user-independent" is somehow more beneficial to the user. It sounds too much like the drivel from the RIAA/MPAA: "we will enhance customer value by increasing the price and decreasing what they can do with it."

Re:Lies. Slander.

[Anubis350]

Thing is, for, say, students (and not necessarily HS or undergraduates, this applies to law/med/grad as well), this is nearly the perfect blend. A laptop that *can* last for 5 hrs while note-taking and yet be used for gaming or general more sophisticated work with stats packages/modeling tools/etc as well. At $1,000 price point it's still not that expensive, in the same ballpark as the base model macbook/macbook pro. If this does get the battery life they claim, or close to it, I could see myself buying one...

Promises, promises

[elrous0]

Yeah, and we'll have a man on Mars in 2035, Obama will change Washington, and Duke Nuke'em Forever will be out any day now.

Re:The Most I'd Pay For a High-End Laptop Is:

[PopeRatzo]

To me, a highend laptop is still 3k.

You are the reason a 5-room bungalow near Cupertino costs $2.5 million.

I think this article uses >$1000 to mean "high end" because it assumes the people buying them are not insane or status-whores.

Re:Lies. Slander.

[Firehed]

I wish they'd start speccing battery life numbers based off h264 playback rather than DVDs. Or more to the point, include a dedicated lower-power decoder chip. I haven't touched DVDs in quite a long time, but between ripped movies and web streaming, there's a ton of h264 playback going on. I haven't done benchmarks on battery drain, but the extra CPU juice required (compared to mpeg2/4) seems to more than offset the savings of not having a dvd drive spinning the whole time. The high WiFi activity during most video playback doesn't help either.

Re:Asus battery life claims believable

[PitaBred]

8 days for an RMA turnaround? That's not bad at all. It can be a month or more here in the US, depending on who you're RMAing to.

Re:Vendor promises

[at_slashdot]

What "protection"? Unlocked phones should be mandated by law like in EU (or at least some countries of EU).

Re:The Most I'd Pay For a High-End Laptop Is:

[LUH 3418]

If I'm not mistaken, batteries generate less heat when you pull out less current. A battery made up of very many cells should dissipate less heat per unit area than a more compact one.

Re:How good/bad is their acpi implementation?

[BikeHelmet]

I wish they would list battery life under "Heavy Use".

I remember reading a Netbook review where it pointed out how bogus the 10 hour claims are. Can't find the exact one, but this one [anandtech.com] is similar.

10 hours? No. 6 hours if you're doing something. Listening to an MP3 while you work in Office and browse the web? That's CPU, speakers, Wifi, possibly Flash(GPU/CPU), and the HDD. 6 hours is expected under fairly normal use for anyone that visits slashdot.

And yet devices like the Pandora handheld [open-pandora.org] make real heavy use claims. Why must it be a small insignificant company to avoid being lied to?