Hari's Corner

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Buying a new laptop or just a new battery?

Filed under: Software and Technology by Hari
Posted on Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 19:15 IST (last updated: Fri, Apr 22, 2011 @ 19:16 IST)

My present laptop, HP Pavilion dv6314 is currently three and a half years old and out of warranty (in spite of the extended warranty). It still works quite well (except the Bluetooth functionality which appears broken) and is more than adequate for my needs. But the battery is, for all practical purposes, dead. I get no more than five minutes backup and I cannot use it other than with the power cord all the time.

I am presently considering whether I should get this laptop replaced. It is a big, heavy laptop and not at all one that is convenient to carry around. The original battery back-up time (with a new battery) is not all that large. Two hours would be stretching it. This is basically a middle-end home multimedia laptop where the priority is performance and not battery life or portability.

This post is more by way of thinking aloud and asking my readers for an opinion. Since the laptop is out of warranty, is it worth buying a new battery and keeping it around for a while longer or should I go ahead and buy a more convenient laptop, especially since I'm going to be on the move in the forseeable future? The original Operating System is a Vista Ultimate 64-bit and is currently slow as a rock with all the Windows updates and fixes. But I hardly use it anyway and prefer to use Ubuntu even on a new laptop. So I would be very satisfied with a basic productivity laptop without an OS pre-installed and one that would be reasonably convenient to lug around.

Let me sum up then the pros and cons I currently have in mind.

Pros of buying a new laptop:
  1. I get the full warranty benefits for a year or two and a brand new system with fully functional hardware to boot.
  2. I can buy one that is more in keeping with my present requirements. A basic, lightweight, reasonably inexpensive productivity laptop with a longer battery life would do the job.
  3. I needn't worry about buying a laptop for the next four or five years at least.
  4. I can save on costs and avoid buying one with a pre-installed OS.

Cons of buying a new laptop are fairly obvious:
  1. Higher cost.
  2. More e-junk to deal with. I have little space to keep my existing hardware and there is almost no re-sale value for any used electronic goods since prices always are coming down.
  3. Hassle of installing and setting up a fresh Operating System since I don't want one with pre-installed Windows.
  4. The process of decision making to pick and choose a brand and then deciding on the specs to meet my requirements can be a real time-sink.

Opinions welcome.

4 comment(s)

  1. If it is more than adequate for your needs, just get yourself a new battery and extend its life by a year or more.

    The trick is to have just enough battery to move it from stationary point A to stationary point B, then go back to using a power cord. Any machine with < 2 hours of full battery power (mine is similar) wasn't meant to be used at a Starbucks trying to compete with the Apple hipsters.

    Comment by Dion Moult (visitor) on Fri, Apr 22, 2011 @ 21:23 IST #
  2. Thanks, Dion. That is exactly what I may end up doing. But since I will be a moving professional in the next few months I was considering a more light-weight option.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Sat, Apr 23, 2011 @ 09:55 IST #
  3. Go the new laptop route, maybe even refurbished to save a few bucks, gets you usually a warranty and new battery while upgrading in the process.

    Comment by Drew (visitor) on Sat, May 7, 2011 @ 01:09 IST #
  4. Drew, I went the new laptop route. There was a HP showroom which had a sale of 20% discount on laptops and also had an exchange offer.

    I ended up buying a HP Touchsmart tm2 laptop which has a touch screen and acts as a tablet also. It means, I can draw my comics directly on the screen and I already love its convenience. So much easier to draw directly than rely on an external pen-tablet device.

    The tablet with pressure sensitivity works perfectly in Ubuntu as well. No configuration was required.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Sat, May 7, 2011 @ 13:58 IST #

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