New laptop?
Answers:
You can always replace the battery with a better one (more cells).
There are also other way that I think you don't want to take like under clocking your cpu so it consumes less energy.
But get a laptop with lesser specs or just buy a better 9 cells battery and it should be fine :). I have a dell inspiron 2200 and it can go through 2 hours :).
Go Dell Toshiba or HP
get dell vostro 1500 for under $699
Battery life will always be less than desired. Normally they function great when new, 4+ hours. This will quickly goto about 2-3 hours with a year.
Laptop Batteries are famous for this.
I wouldn't spend so much time worrying about the ram. At the price point you are looking at, make sure it has at least 1 gig of ram. Otherwise Vista will be less than impressive.
Try to find a Tablet PC laptop. You will just love it. Trust me.
The price are a little bit high but it's all worth it.
Cheers.
check craigslist for your city/town; peeps should be selling something...
I suggest the hp 6 series, check on hp.com for 6291ea, thats the one i have got and it is really good and its battery will live to more than 2 houres.
You should not get a Gateway because Gateway makes low quality computers that are not reliable. If you want a high quality and reliable computer, you should get a Toshiba laptop. I would highly recommend a Toshiba Satellite M65-S9092.
The answers post by the user, for information only, RunQA.com does not guarantee the right.
More Questions and Answers ...