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Happy 2010 everyone! I know I'm a little late with the holiday greetings, but there is a lot to share on...
When the system is running there are just too many variables to properly estimate a charge time, but a worst case can typically be measured. Intel has this nice gadget for Google desktop: http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/ppmonitor.html?hl=en It reads the power going into and out of the battery, so drain the battery a bit, and then run your most intensive apps while it's recharging. Divide the battery watt hours by this number and you'll get an approximate charge time. On my old inspiron it was about 5-6hours to charge at full load and the 65W charger. When I added a battery for the D-bay, I upgraded to a 130W charger, and brought my recharge time for a total of 130Wh of batteries, to about 1.5hours regardless of system load, allowing a near 50/50 split of battery usage vs. recharge time.
The best thing to do is upgrade the charger when you order if it's an option and you expect to play intesive gaming or calculations. It should be a $10-30 upgrade vs. a $50-120 replacement later.
Here's my "knee-jerk" reaction, which needs to be verified by someone more knowledgable than I about battery architecture/engineering:
Ubuntu Linux on any notebook hardware can already give you a estimate of how long it takes to get to a complete charge.
Solution: Find a piece of poorly written Windows compatible software to bloat your system even further to track charging, swap with a known good OS, or pay the kid next door to write something quick and dirty to give you your answer.
Although Ubuntu can provide an estimate to a complete charge, it does not do so before receiving the PC.
What WinOffice is proposing is that the Dell page tell consumers how long the batteries will last before purchasing. Â This would allow people to buy the battery that best suits their needs. Â I personally need a long lasting battery, and based on my configuration I would've liked to have known how long the battery was going to last prior to purchasing. Â CNet does a very good job at providing mostly accurate estimations on their website when reviewing products. Â
It turns out that a 9-Cell in the Dell XPS RED (m1530) will last about 4 1/2 hours (on-going five depending on usage). Â I would've liked to have known what the 6-Cell generally lasts prior to making my selection. Â The downside is it's simply an estimation. Â I've had my battery last everywhere from only 3 hours 45 minutes up to 5 hours 30 minutes, and even in that broad range it has a better working time than my first laptop and UMPC.
How long your battery lasts depends on ALL KINDS of stuff. Examples? How long your battery lasts depends on:
*Â What power profile you set
*Â Whether Vista Aero is enabled
*Â What programs you are running
* Whether those programs use 3D hardware support or not
*Â For many apps that do use 3D hardware, it depends how fast you are working
*Â What hard drive you chose in the config
*Â What video card you chose in the config
*Â What brightness your backlight is set to
*Â Whether your wifi is enabled
*Â Whether you are connected to wifi
*Â Whether you are transferring anything over wifi
*Â Whether your hard drive is being consistently accessed, or idling
*Â How long it has been since the battery was manufactured
*Â The temperature of the battery on average
*Â How long you have had the laptop
*Â Whether the battery typically stays charged, on the table, or frequently gets discharged and then charged back up.
I'm going to stop there but that isn't even an all-inclusive list. Don't you think that if a laptop's battery life could be measured in minutes, companies would use it as a selling point and plaster it all over their models?
Besides, to go full circle here, by providing the WHr rating of the battery they are giving you the single most accurate figure for battery life that exists. 56 WHr is a scientific measurement of power storage within the battery.