Personal Laptop for work

[Rickster]

I have just done an experiment.

I have pretty much had my work lenovu laptop plugged in since November 2015 and very seldomly take it home on weekends where it is plugged in again.

This thread got me wondering if the battery life would be significantly worse then when it was bought.

I unplugged it at 11:28 this morning and I have been using it ever since its now 14:30 battery life is 64% estimated time remaining 5h15min.

So 3 hours of use with 5 hours remaining seems about right to me. I think most laptops have about 8 hours of use but stand to be corrected.

Will update just before 16:00 and see if anything drops dramatically.

You can see the battery capacity with a program called BatteryInfoView by Nirsoft.

 

[Scary_Turtle]

You can see the battery capacity with a program called BatteryInfoView by Nirsoft.

ah ok downloaded it

Designed capacity: 47520 mWH
Fully charged capacity: 39 210 mWH

So I have lost a bit over 4 years but have no idea if this is within the normal range

 

[Rickster]

ah ok downloaded it

Designed capacity: 47520 mWH
Fully charged capacity: 39 210 mWH

So I have lost a bit over 4 years but have no idea if this is within the normal range

In the settings you can change it to mAh.

 

[Dolby]

If you're going to do work on this I assume your IT department is happy with it?

Are you sure your company will allow this?

Yes - I've chatted to them and although it isn't the norm, they'll check it out further *if* I decide to go ahead

 

[Dolby]

My MSI GE70 (cough cough) is now almost 7 years old and still on it's original battery and it is still working

You're quite lucky then.

I often have people walking into a meeting saying that their new notebook only lasts x hours now - was much better a year ago. As I say, certain manufacturers recommend you don't keep it plugged into AC.

I bought a very high end HP with touchscreen and SSD etc etc. Battery life was around 8 hours at the time it was new and after a year it battled to hold charge more than 30 mins.

Not the first time I've heard that ... hence my question.

Thanks for the input

 

[Dolby]

If you plan to have it docked permanently 24/7 then rather get a Desktop.

I have a work issued laptop now - I'm in meetings pretty much every single day, so I need the portability. It's an i5 / SSD / 4GB RAM which should be adequate, but it's very slow. Like, very slow.

It could be RAM and I was going to ask them to beed it up for me, but in the interim I got excited about buying a PC that'd I'd love. I have a desktop at home - so it'd be purely for work. But as I'm on the thing 8-10 hours a day, something with some oomph would be great. But I've heard from plenty people to rather take the work issued one because of things like the battery, which will be ruined in 1-2 years

Thought I'd check with the community

 

[RedViking]

You're quite lucky then.

I often have people walking into a meeting saying that their new notebook only lasts x hours now - was much better a year ago. As I say, certain manufacturers recommend you don't keep it plugged into AC.



Not the first time I've heard that ... hence my question.

Thanks for the input

Well lucky in a sense. The rest of the notebook not so lucky.....

But I like the power options on the new Dell I bought. (see above somewhere), which I think will work for what you want. It charges full current when you work on it, and when you stop working but leave it plugged in, it lowers the current... So in theory it should last much longer.

 

[SauRoNZA]

I have a work issued laptop now - I'm in meetings pretty much every single day, so I need the portability. It's an i5 / SSD / 4GB RAM which should be adequate, but it's very slow. Like, very slow.

It could be RAM and I was going to ask them to beed it up for me, but in the interim I got excited about buying a PC that'd I'd love. I have a desktop at home - so it'd be purely for work. But as I'm on the thing 8-10 hours a day, something with some oomph would be great. But I've heard from plenty people to rather take the work issued one because of things like the battery, which will be ruined in 1-2 years

Thought I'd check with the community

Will they even allow you to bring your own device?

 

[Dolby]

Will they even allow you to bring your own device?

Yea.. I've chatted to the bosses.

They're not happy to actually launch a 'Bring Your Own Device' company wide, but they haven't said 'no' when I brought it up for myself.

I wouldn't buy until they say yes though. But I'm hoping to Europe next month, so with the exchange rate recently... Perhaps better to hold off

 

[BigBear]

Laptops made within the last 6 years normally stop charging at 100% and switch to AC power and if the battery is above 95.5% and you plug it in, it wont charge.

You could always get a laptop with a removable battery and just run it off AC power.

For reliability i recommend a Mac, I have a mid 2012 13" model and i love it, the battery is a bit pap but it handles charging very well.

It was manufactured in 2012 and the battery capacity is currently on 84.6%

+1 mac.. Prefer 15 inch though..

 

[Lupus]

I have a work issued laptop now - I'm in meetings pretty much every single day, so I need the portability. It's an i5 / SSD / 4GB RAM which should be adequate, but it's very slow. Like, very slow.

It could be RAM and I was going to ask them to beed it up for me, but in the interim I got excited about buying a PC that'd I'd love. I have a desktop at home - so it'd be purely for work. But as I'm on the thing 8-10 hours a day, something with some oomph would be great. But I've heard from plenty people to rather take the work issued one because of things like the battery, which will be ruined in 1-2 years

Thought I'd check with the community

Is it running Windows 10 and McAfee? Cause that seems to kill laptops, our IT department rolled out McAfee last year, it's managed to effect production servers to the point where the guys turned off the antivirus. Which than of course lead to Ransomware viruses jumping on. Because lo and behold the standard Windows AV wasn't turned back on either.