Your notebook/productivity tool/mobile office dragging you down with a sub 3-hour battery life? Aren't these devices meant to "free you from the wired inconvenience of desktop-bound machines"? (quoted from an ad somewhere). Well so far the most dissapointing aspect ofmobile devices have always been the battery life, or the lack thereof. In comparison, wireless performance, form-factor and the resulting portability, applications and the features have all improved tremendously over the years, leaving long battery life as the holy grail for future mobile devices.

                                            Getting desperate for power?

Manufacturers are making strides towards this elusive goal, with increasingly longer run-times cropping up from a combination of low-power components and improving battery capacities. A prime example of this combination of cutting-edge technology is the HP EliteBook 6930p. First, a caveat - we do not have an actual product at hand to test it out - the EliteBook is after all just being release in the US at this moment. Regardless, the combination of tweaked BIOS, drivers, improved hardware, and HP's combining them into one chassis makes good sense and it is easy to believe that the actual product will achieve HP's claims, or at least a good percentage of it.

                                           HP has a solution for the power-deprived, without going into over-large and heavy devices.

First off: the battery itself. The EliteBook offers an optional "ultra-capacity" battery that uses 12 high-ampere cells to give as much run-time on one charge as possible. HP's specially designed BIOS optimizes power draw and works together with tweaked Win XP drivers (such as for the Intel graphics driver) so that power loss is minimized as much as possible. Some internal components were also expressly chosen to provide the smallest power draw - primary of these would be the LED-backlight LCD called Illumi-Lite which HP claims increases battery life by up to four hours. Complementing this is the Intel-sourced 80GB SSD option which HP states gives a 7% increase in battery life compared to standard disc-based mechanical hard disks.

                                            The HP EliteBook 6930p boasts of 24 hours of up-time.

Of course, these energy saving initiatives were performed on a worthy foundation; HP's design flair, knack for building solid laptops, and up-to-date features list are all present in this EliteBook iteration. The EliteBook 6930p has a starting weight of only 4.7 lbs., using a 14" screen with the aforementioned available LED option. shock resistance for the hard disk, spill resistance for the keyboard, and the magnesium shell of HP's DuraCase construction help protect the laptop. Processor choices range from Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz P8400 up to the T9400 running at 2.53GHz (with 6MB of cache!), 2 to 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 memory, 160GB of storage or the 80GB SSD option, AMD's Mobility Radeon HD3450, and Microsoft Vista Business, with an option to downgrade to XP Pro.

                                           Just a parting shot - don't get caught out the same way!

While it is not yet available locally, I can imagine that there will be a lot of people clamoring for the HP name brand offeringsomething as alluring as 24 hours of continuous operation on one charge. Given our traffic situation here especially during mass migrations to the provinces during long weekends, and most people's penchant of straying far from the power socket, the HP Elitebook 6930p is a perfect solution for the road warrior, and a perfect example of convergent efforts resulting in an excellent solution to your un-wired productivity problem.