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Round five: battery life
Will the laptop last until you land?
Anyone who's been on a cross-country flight knows the desperation that comes after your laptop battery dies: suddenly your activity choices consist of watching a tepid in-flight movie or flipping though the duty free catalogue.
We timed how long the MacBook Pro's and Dell Studio XPS's batteries lasted while playing an XviD movie with all power-saving features turned off, and screen brightness and volume set to maximum. All wireless radios were left on, to create a gruelling battery test in which the victor would clearly emerge.
Keep in mind this is a particularly stressful test: you'll get considerably longer battery life out of both machines by leaving the power-saving options on, and doing less arduous tasks like web browsing.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Winner: under our torturous battery test, the MacBook takes it by a huge margin.
| Round 1 | Round 2 | Round 3 | Round 4 | Round 5 | Round 6 | Round 7 | Round 8 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | ||||||||
| Dell |
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