in terms of battery life, i know that toshiba sucks. is dell the best when it comes to long battery life? what are the parameters do you look for when you are looking for a laptop with long battery life?
Model varies a lot more than brand. What kind of battery life various Dell models have varies tremendously. Also, when there are multiple configurations of a machine available, how you configure it can make a fair difference.
If you want a good battery life, there are basically two ways to go:
* A small machine with a "ultra low voltage" processor and otherwise built for power efficiency - from Dell, their current model for this is the D430. The other up-side to these is they tend to be very light (< 4 lbs). The down side to these is they have small screens (12" widescreen typically on new ones), are slower, have smaller hard drives, and to use a CD/DVD it will be external (many times they come with an external one).
* A medium-sized machine with a regular processor, and large batteries. Professional-line machines where you can put in a second battery in the CD bay tend to be best here - from Dell, the D630 is my usual recommendation and in general what I recommend to people who need a good balance of portability and power. These start around 5 lbs but in general with an extended main battery (9 cell for most of the Dells) and a secondary bay battery you are looking at more like 6-6 1/2 lbs.
In general, in terms of configuration:
* Vista seems to be pretty poor for battery life, right now I'd go with XP still if this is a big concern.
* Big screens use more power. REALLY big screens (17") use lots more power. 14.1" widescreen is a good compromise for most people; 15.4" will probably be acceptable for midsize models as well. If your machine is available with more than one screen resolution, higher resolution/brightness will mean more power used, although I'm not sure it's enough more to be significant.
* More memory will actually help with battery life in many cases, since it helps you run the hard drive less.
* Faster processors *within the same generation* use more power; newer generation processors use less power. Dual core processors are generally quite power efficient; going with a single-core processor to save power is generally false economy (example: "Core Solo" processors are a generation older than "Core 2 Duo"). In general, the best bet for power consumption right now is the Core 2 Duo T5500 or T5600, but the difference between those and the T7100 (much faster) is not going to be large.
* Integrated Intel graphics will generally use less power than NVidia or ATI graphics chips when used on XP or on Vista with Aero turned off. The jury is still out somewhat on whether that's still true on Vista once you are running the Aero eye-candy.
Also, some tips for getting the most battery life out of any Windows laptop:
* Set the power profile to "Max Battery" in Control Panels/Power
* Avoid running programs that sit in the background and consume cycles (except for a virus scanner, which is essential.) Screensavers, google desktop search (or similar search programs) etc all eat up CPU.
* Turn off things like Bluetooth, analog modems, infrared, etc. when they're not in use.
* If you have a machine with a CD/DVD drive that's not removeable, make sure you don't leave disks in the drive when you're not using it - such drives use a lot of power when running, and Windows will often stupidly spin up the drive to see what's on the disk even when it's not your intent to use it.
* Turn the screen brightness down as low possible such that you can comfortably read it.