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Decoding Battery Life for Laptops

This is a story of truth, greed and the American Way.

Oh, and also laptop battery-life benchmarks.

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Pogue's Battery Rant
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Two things about battery-life measurements for laptops: First, they usually bear little relationship to reality. I don’t know about you, but my “five-hour” battery often dies halfway between J.F.K. and LAX.

Second, laptop ads always use that essential tool of wiggle-roomers everywhere, “Up to.” As in, “Up to five hours.”

Folks, “up to” is one of the greatest cop-outs in the English language. You know what? I’ve got a laptop that gets “up to” 1,000 hours on a charge! Because “up to” just means “something below this number.”

Well, so what, right? Why pick on laptop makers? Every industry does it, right?

Wrong.

In 2003, the digital camera industry had a similar problem. Every company was advertising its cameras’ battery life in overblown terms. Each had its own testing protocol,
none representative of
real life.
Pretty