Samsung Q430 Benchmark Results
PCMark Vantage

Longer bars are better
3DMark06

Longer bars are better
PCMark Vantage Loop Battery Life Test

Battery life in Minutes
Longer bars are better
Next page: Good, but average, performance
COMMENTS
Well....
I quite like the design, but then again I did have one of those music centres and I loved it.
Not sure how the battery manager reducing capacity to 80% helps? Is it just a case that, as a battery loses about 20% a year anyway, the first years loss won't be noticed because it always ran at 80% capacity? e.g. "I bought my laptop a year ago, it had 2.5 hour battery life then and it still does today!"
Sounds like smoke and mirrors to me.
Design?
What a quaint idea - that somehow design gets "better" as time goes on. Of course it's bollocks - as proved beyond doubt by the plague of those hideous piano-lacquer flat-screen TVs. "Retro" in itself is neither good nor bad, design-wise - it's just "retro"
Re; Batt. Man.
So, you're saying that such an application adds an increased chase of falling off cliffs?
They should add a consumer warning.
Sexy? Not even close!
Hell no! sometimes I feel like I am the only person left who likes technology to be plain flat black. I absolutely despise laptops with those god aweful silver or grey sections. This machine's color choice makes me nauseous.
Battery
Actually, it does make sense: these cells are all charged with a constant current source, making it difficult to tell when it's truly 'full' as opposed to 'overcharged' (this problem gets worse with cell age, as I understand it). Leaving the cells slightly depleted will extend their usable life, especially for the folk who leave the thing on mains pretty much all the time (Mrs. Ball boy: are you listening?) even a laptop has overcharge prevention - which all should have these days - because the initial state when the laptop is powered-up is to go into a charge cycle...hence the long-term overcharging effects.
As the author suggests, how useful this is depends on how long you intend to keep the laptop - personally, I'd keep a home laptop for a while & would probably still have this when brushed silver came back into fashion!
