As you can see, these ‘figures’ that are given on marketing literature are very difficult to define.

Its interesting they quote DVD playback times when the basic package doesnt include a DVD player!! Maybe they meant ‘video playback’ instead.

I like the look of the Samsung but I can’t help thinking that a VIA processor would be better choice.

I wonder when the Pentium-M devices will start coming out. They will boost power and give better battery life.

Steve.

TabletKiosk is quoting 2.5 hours estimated battery life with its internal cells, and Samsung is quoting 3.5. I just did the arithmetic but of course there’s no way to know if that’s a fair comparison.

As to the DVD playback time, I’d interpreted that to be the playback time with the external DVD running… after all, there’s a dedicated power socket for the “ODD”, so the DVD player would be drawing power from the Q1 instead of its own cells. Not the design choice I’d have made, prefering instead to add that weight budget to the ODD to keep the viewing time up, but perhaps that wasn’t feasible or was too expensive.

Since the Eo looks to be sold out in North America, however, it looks like the point is moot to me. Now to go harass my local retailers to get a Samsung in for me.

— Steve

I have a pretty high confidence in those figures.
The only thing that Samsung could do make a marked difference in battery life is to use the better screen technology that they have access to or to sneak in a bigger battery. (However, I see they have a 3-cell battery which is probably going to be a standard 20-25 Watt-hour part)

The Celeron is not a leading-edge component and shows that a price-power trade-off has been made here. I wonder if there have been other trade-offs made in the design?

Samsung are claiming 3.5 hours of battery life BUT only 1.4 hours of DVD playback. That to me sounds like ‘no-load’ and ‘medium-load’ figures and they match my predictions.

Where did you see the ‘extra hour of battery life’ quoted?

Regards
Steve.

How much confidence do you have in those figures? Some of the Q1′s allure (for me, anyway) was the extra hour of battery life quoted, but if the Celeron M is that much less efficient then the Eo just became a lot more tempting to me.

— Steve

Good question.

Yes, it will make a difference if you watch it from a memory stick. However, when compared to CPU useage and LCD power useage, the advantage is going to be minimal. (est. 10 minutes.)

Steve.

Question? When you are watching a movie the battery life does not depend a little bit on where are you running the movie? Let say, if you are watching a movie from a DVD ROM will the battery last less than if you play the movie in your HDD? What would be the impact if you play the movie in a USB Memory stick vs. from the HDD?

So far, all the batteries i’ve seen have been 22-26W. The 6-cell options on some UMPC’s are double that.

A 50Wh battery would be quite heavy and the 2.2h run time figure points towards a 26W battery rather than a 50W battery.

My rather bold guess is that ‘internal battery’ figure is wrong.

Steve.

Are you sure?
From the eo manual:

Battery specs: Re-chargeable 26W Lithium Ion Battery Pack (Cylindrical Cell, 2400mAh)
Run time: approx. 2.2h
Power adapter: 19V, 3.42A, AC 100-240 Volt, 65W

Internal Battery: 26W x 2.2h = 57.2 Wh

Origami devices have about half the battery capacity of the laptops in the test. (24 watt-hours on Origami devices as opposed to 48 watt-hour in the test)
I’ve updated the entry to make that clearer.

Regards
Steve.

I do not understand your math. If the Origami has smaller screen, etc, etc, etc, the battery life should be bigger than we saw in those tests no smaller.