I've been out of the laptop loop for quite sometime so I'm sure I've missed a bunch of new developments. I have a number of questions that I'll be asking but they mostly center around one theme for me: battery life. I'm obsessed with it. Every purchase like an mp3 player or a cell phone the number 1 thing I care about is battery life. I've been mocked by a few friends for some of my electronics purchases but when they're phone is dying on a vacation or at some critical time a smile comes to my face when I notice I have a few days before I have that problem.
That said, one of the things I simply can't give up in my potential new purchase is a separate graphics processor. I've heard decent things about Intel's new on-board stuff and even played with some of it but it falls just short for me. I don't really ever play games so I'm not talking about the need for so crazy GPU here but I do use some programs that benefit greatly from a dedicated GPU although I go stretches without using those programs too. Ideally I'd like to be able to use on-board graphics most of the time and then simply switch on a slightly more powerful GPU when needed. Remember, this has to do with battery life for me. So do notebooks allow this these days? Do most do this or is it something special that select models do? If so, which ones do it? Is the battery savings noticeable between intel's on-board GPU vs Nvidia or ATI GPUs? How exactly does toggling on and off work (eg. a setting that can be quickly changed, a change that requires a restart, a special function button on the keyboard, etc...)?
That said, one of the things I simply can't give up in my potential new purchase is a separate graphics processor. I've heard decent things about Intel's new on-board stuff and even played with some of it but it falls just short for me. I don't really ever play games so I'm not talking about the need for so crazy GPU here but I do use some programs that benefit greatly from a dedicated GPU although I go stretches without using those programs too. Ideally I'd like to be able to use on-board graphics most of the time and then simply switch on a slightly more powerful GPU when needed. Remember, this has to do with battery life for me. So do notebooks allow this these days? Do most do this or is it something special that select models do? If so, which ones do it? Is the battery savings noticeable between intel's on-board GPU vs Nvidia or ATI GPUs? How exactly does toggling on and off work (eg. a setting that can be quickly changed, a change that requires a restart, a special function button on the keyboard, etc...)?
