So I thought, let's post a poll and see what users really want, performance or battery. I know that many of you will say, I want both, but let's be realistic, at this moment we can't have both. If we could do you think that Intel would have released the McCaslin at 800 MHz? Come on! Let's choose between what we have at this moment.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Performance vs Battery Life
Yesterday after reading my post about Intel, Steve pointed me to some of the Santa Rosa platform good features designed to get the maximum Battery Life as possible. And do not get me wrong, there are people that will prefer to have more battery than a better performance. I myself bought the eo v7110 with a VIA processor because I thought at that time that Battery was more important than performance. But then while using my eo v7110 I quickly discovered that there are many ways to get more battery life if I needed but there was not anyway to get more performance out of that device. And in my case, performance is more important. I'm editing movies and pictures in my UMPC, I'm working with heavy applications like Visual Studio. So I need performance. The VIA processor was not good enough for me and this is why now I'm using mostly the Samsung Q1 with a Celeron processor.
So I thought, let's post a poll and see what users really want, performance or battery. I know that many of you will say, I want both, but let's be realistic, at this moment we can't have both. If we could do you think that Intel would have released the McCaslin at 800 MHz? Come on! Let's choose between what we have at this moment.
So I thought, let's post a poll and see what users really want, performance or battery. I know that many of you will say, I want both, but let's be realistic, at this moment we can't have both. If we could do you think that Intel would have released the McCaslin at 800 MHz? Come on! Let's choose between what we have at this moment.
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This is such a hard question to answer. They both have several levels - a minimum acceptable, a comfortable leve, and a happy user level.
ReplyDeleteFor UMPC battery life, I'd say 6hrs with an extended battery is my absolute minimum - I don't want to be tied down to an AC adapter. Might as well get a laptop if that's the case. About 8hrs with wifi and typical full usage gives me more comfort that it will be bearable even if the battery is not brand new. And 12hrs plus is what I really want, but of course that's still a fantasy.
On the performance side, at the minimum levels I'm more worried about longevity of the UMPC than the actual performance hiccups. I can tolerate some of that if necessary, but if it's already on the edge of reasonable performance when I buy it, I'm sure to be fed up with it in a year with the increased demands of software.
For most of us, it's harder to rate the importance of performance because it's so hard to quantify and understand in terms common to everyone.
I picked batter life in the poll, just because it's sort of the main entry criteria that gets me away from a laptop. Like I said, if I have to carry around an adapter, I might as well use a small laptop or convertible tablet.
But, really, performance is probably most important overall. Not because I demand zippy (although I do want zippy), but because I don't want it to have a short life expectancy. These things aren't cheap yet, so I need to get something that will last a few years adequately.
I'd have to say battery life. The fact is that I don't treat my umpc as a laptop replacement. If I have need to do 'heavy' stuff, like visual studio, video editing and the like, I have a nice dual core laptop for that. -Plus I don't think I'd like to do those things on such a small screen anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe UMPC has a different purpose for me. Yes I want to be able to watch movies and play media. But hey even my Pocket PC will play full res Divx / Xvid files, so your typical UMPC should have no problem there.
I use my UMPC primarily for web surfing, note taking, journaling, ebooks, IM, skype and email. For these purposes I don't need a power house, but I do need decent battery life. I'd like to get 3 - 4 hours on a standard battery and 8 on extended. My preference is to use the standard battery as I find the extended make the device slightly too heavy to be comfortable.