Battery Life/Plug-In

[mustardgas]

Hello.

I'll be buying a laptop soon, and my plan is to use the laptop for 4+ hours at a time. What size battery do you guys recommend?
Also, is a battery even needed if the laptop is plugged in? If not, will I still have to shut the laptop off every few hours in order to prevent overheating?

Thanks.

-mustardgas

 

[DMGrier]

Well the battery life will depend on the system specs and the task you plan on doing. I have a Dell Inspiron 1501 with a 6 cell battery and I get about 2 1/2 to 3 hours depending on the task I'm making the computer run. So I would recommend atleast a 9 cell. But if you buy HP certain models they sell come with 12 cell batteries. As far as system specs go to optimize battery I would stick with something around,
2.0 GHz dual core
2-3 GB of memroy
Nothing more powerful them a nvidia 9200m.
Once you start talking about anything more powerful than that like how a lot of laptops will come a nvidia 6900m GT and 2.2 GHz dual core cpu or higher, you sacrifice battery life. Just leave you battery plugged in when your hooked up to the wall. It won't ruin your battery.