Laptop Hardware Questions

[postmaster50]

Hello,
I am looking to buy a midrange laptop, I already have all my core components planned out, capable of running HL2. (Intel Core 2 Duo... blah blah) But I don't know if I should switch out a few parts at the expense of battery life; so my 2 questions are:

1. If I opt for 2 Gigs of RAM instead of 1, will the battery life be significantly lessened; and will it make THAT much of a gameplay difference?

2. Should I go for a 120 GB Hard drive at 5400 rpm, or a 100 GB Hard drive at 7200 rpm? The 20 GB difference doesn't matter, I probably won't use it; just my only practical choices. Basically, is the enhanced speed bonus of the second justified by its larger (if any more) battery drain over the first one? Or would the power requirements be equal because the first is larger while the second is faster?

EDIT: 2 more questions,
Is power drain effected by monitor resolution? (i.e. does a 1650x1080 resolution drain battery faster than 1200x800)

MOST IMPORTANTLY: which video card is better:
ATI Mobility Radeon X1700 External VRAM 256MB (512MB with Hyper Memory) [wtf is hyper memory anyway?]
OR
NVDIA GeForce Go G7600 External 512MB VRAM [and I suppose mention any power considerations of the two]

Enlighten me if possible.

 

[giant384]

the battery life should last awhile. it all depends on what your doing. the majority of the battery life is taken from the display. so to help keep it longer; just turn the brightness down.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

I bought a pretty high range laptop recently, it's a Sony Vaio SZ3 and it has 2gb of RAM, doesn't make much different to battery at all. I have 100gb HD too (a 60 and 40 independent arrangement)and that has little effect too, it depends if you require alot of space. The biggest drainers of power is the display as said above, and a graphics card if you want one.

 

[Sanada]

Apparently, Hybrid drives are coming out soon (early 2007) which are basically FLASH memory used as a buffer and a hard drive combined. For laptops this means extended battery life as the hard drive is one of the devices that consumes a lot of power. It also means much faster boot times.

I dunno if these are even coming out so it might not be worth bothering waiting. You can always upgrade to one anyway I should think later on.

 

[postmaster50]

Thanks for the info, added two extra questions

 

[hungryduck]

Apparently, Hybrid drives are coming out soon (early 2007) which are basically FLASH memory used as a buffer and a hard drive combined. For laptops this means extended battery life as the hard drive is one of the devices that consumes a lot of power. It also means much faster boot times.

I dunno if these are even coming out so it might not be worth bothering waiting. You can always upgrade to one anyway I should think later on.

While this is a valid argument, no matter what you do these days, there is ALWAYS something much better 3 months away - so just bite the bullet and buy when you need it.