When the first netbooks appeared, the battery time was anything but good. Poorly optimized platforms with meager 3-cell batteries made the first netbooks run out of battery after only 2 hours at regular use, sometimes faster. If you think the hardware has remained the same since the launch you have most likely missed the fact that the batteries has been upgraded and the many power saving measurements that have been taken.
MSI has now slapped all of the competition silly with a battery time of incredible 16 hours, with a regular 6-cell battery in its hybrid netbook Wind U115. By using the more energy efficient Menlow platform and a combination of regular HDD and SSD storage, MSI has managed to take the netbook platform to new heights.
To get 16 hours of battery time they had to do the following;
“SSD + LCD enabled, HDD disabled, 6 cell battery 11.1V 5.2Ah, WLAN, BT, Webcam disabled, speakers muted, max power saving enabled.”
When you activate a couple of functions like the WLAN and speakers the battery time should drop drastically, but there are certainly lots of people who would appreciate 16 hours of uptime when working on that important paper or report when traveling. We look forward to some more practical tests of MSI’s long-lived netbook that is expected to cost around $550.
