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The battery in the Vostro 130 is fully enclosed inside the chassis and is a 30Whr model.
We tested the machine under a few contrived situations. Firstly, we acted as a general ‘business professional' using Microsoft Office, surfing the net, sending and receiving emails, viewing several video files on youtube, and working on images within Photoshop CS5. Wireless was enabled and screen brightness was set to half, which is usable.
Under these conditions we achieved just over 2 hours which isn't as good as we hoped. Understandably, with such a flat chassis design, there are some compromises to be made. Battery life looks to be one of them.
Next, we acted as a ‘businessman on a plane'. Meaning we played 720p video files until the battery ran out, wireless was disabled and screen was set to three quarters brightness as we felt any lower ruined the overall saturation of high definition video. Headphones were connected.
Watching videos reduced the battery life by another 25 minutes, although this reduction is not as great as might be expected. What we can take from this result however is that wireless has a big hit on the battery life as it was disabled in this final test.
I love it. I am actually comtemplating it for college. I dont need massive battery life, but it seems somewhat of an oversight from Dell to only get 2 hours or so out of it. businessmen on the move might need at least double this a day.
I am glad you didnt score it down too badly though, it does a lot of things right.
My colleague in work has this and his overheats a lot, as our office is very warm. I might fire in an SSD for him next week and see if it helps.
I agree completely with the review. the internals are great and the design is beautiful, but the battery technology just doesnt cut it. for a business orenited machine this is a huge problem. there are a lot of complaints about it on dells forums.
I bought this last month and agree with most of the review. the design is brilliant, but my battery barely lasts 1.45 when watching youtube videos 🙁 I find this unacceptable and I wish I had read reviews before buying. apart from this is great. I hope Version 2 is better.
good review Zardon. seems like a decent all round machine unless you need a lot of battery support during the day. I suppose some business professionals might just need it for a presentation over lunch or something, then its ideal as the size is great.
Typical of Dell really.
Make an adamo style pc for the masses, keep the sexy looks, put a nice keyboard in, good screen, great design, then copy Apple and put the battery inside to keep the shape lovely.
Then cock up the battery life completely ruling it out for the target market. this is the third review on this machine ive read, this is the most detailed and unfortunately id have scored it much lower as the primary function for businessmen is a battery that lasts at least 4 hours. not 2.
I like it a lot, and the entry level one is cheap. shame about the battery, and you cant even buy another for replacement during the day. as you need to take the whole machine apart. what a stupid idea 🙁
ID buy it if I had the money, but a netbook is my limit, ordered a dell 10 inch last week, still hasnt arrived
That is a gorgeous laptop for the price, just a shame they didnt manage to get battery life to 4 hours or so 🙁 2 hours is terrible.
I just ordered one for college work, I dont need long battery life, just 1 hour at lunch, then it will be in mains at night. thanks for detailed review. I got an SSD in mine.