Many people rent laptops for business trips or sales conferences, when the laptop will not be connected to a power source all the ime. If you are going to use a laptop as it was intended, away from your desk, you’re going to want it to provide as much battery life as possible. The first step is to shop around for a unit that offers the best battery life possible, and then seek out independent reviews to verify this performance. A good laptop should be able to run for four hours or more on a full charge, and as the technology advances, finding units that can double this time isn’t unrealistic.
The operating system on most laptops will allow for the hardware to be configured to utilize the battery as efficiently as possible. It is just up to the user to navigate their way to these tabs and set things like the display to turn off, hard drives to power down, or even the processor to slow down when it isn’t needed to run full speed. Not all processors can provide this speed throttling, but finding a system with a Mobile Pentium/Celeron or Centrino processor may be your best bet to ensure this capability.
Another way to ensure extended life away from a power outlet is to just add a second battery. Although you can obviously carry a charged spare in your bag, some laptops allow for two batteries to be installed at once, with one generally replacing the optical disk drive.
Portability is another important consideration for laptop renters. All laptop computers are not created equal, and the size and weight of the various models reflect that. Some may weigh more than others due to the quantity of components included, but it may also be due to the quality of the components. Larger displays, multiple hard drives, and other integrated components will all contribute to the weight of a laptop. The largest single source of weight in a laptop may be the battery, and systems with two batteries as described above, should be expected to be much heavier.
No laptop may be considered heavy in the grand scheme of things, but just a few pounds more may be noticeable if you regularly have to lug it through a busy airport or across a large college campus. Geeks.com may not provided the exact weight of each laptop they carry, but they do provide a shipping weight for each, which is a good approximation of what the laptop and various accessories will weigh when loaded into your carrying bag.
The overall size of a laptop is generally governed by the size of the display included. You may have seen the commercial where Yao Ming (7′5″ basketball player) and Verne Troyer (Mini-Me) compare their laptops with 12 inch and 17 inch monitors. It is an excellent demonstration of the range of sizes available in laptop computers, and how the various sizes may be appropriate for different users. Those seeking a replacement for their desktop computer may insist on a 17” display, while those seeking to minimize size and weight in the name of portability may be willing to select a laptop with a smaller display.