dell vostro 1310

couple questions,

with the 6 cell, what is the battery life on the INTEGRATED chip? i know its 3-4 hours with the discrete graphics.

Does the 9 cell make the laptop any bulkier?

 

i don't know the exact battery life with 6 cell with integrated but i do know that the 9 cell does in deed make it bulkier. I would stay with the 6 cell if i were you, unless your doing some major battery usage.

 

so it doesnt just increase weight, but size as well?

 

Yes, it increases size. Typically 9-cell batteries protrude out of the back or front of laptops (depending on where the battery is located). Your battery would stick out a bit, about the size of a snickers bar, perhaps a little longer and a little skinnier.

Update: looks like it will stick out of the back...in my opinion it would be hardly noticeable.

 

Yeah unless you are a road warrior I would just go with the 6 cell...

 

This is what it looks like with a 9-cell http://picasaweb.google.com/Kwantlen/Vostro13109CellBattery

 

^makes it look a little uglier. My vostro 1400 has a 9 cell, but because its already ugly, i don't really mind. But the battery type definitely affects the total weight of the notebook.

 

I think the Vostros are pretty cool and sheek looking

 

well, compared to other laptops (toshiba, sony, hp) the dell vostro looks like a piece of black metal. For the performance they are extremely cheap though. The only thing that looks worse than the vostro are thinkpads. Now those are... terrible.

 

ThinkPads are functionally beautiful! There's nothing better than a ThinkPad to give off a sense of professionalism. Also, ThinkPads are much much better engineered and will probably outlast lots of other notebooks from the same generation. (I have a 100MHz Pentium 1 ThinkPad 310ED around. It still works, though it doesn't really have the processing power for much more than being a dedicated Tetris machine.)

Also, the soft touch paint finish on ThinkPads is delightful. It's way easier to maintain than most consumergrade glossy lids (hides scratches very well, doesn't pick up fingerprints easily) and is extremely smooooooooooooth and nice to touch.