"Battery Life: This is one of the most, if not the most, important factor to consider when shopping for a portable computer. For this test, I enabled every single onboard device, set the brightness to its maximum and disabled all the power saving options. It was left idling at the desktop for the whole time with the wireless connection used as a bridge so there was constant traffic going through the network adaptors. Using Windows XP, Asus' Eee 1000H managed to stay awake for over four hours, four hours and twenty five minutes to be exact. Turning to Ubuntu, things don't shine as much. The open source alternative can only manage three hours and forty-six minutes. It's still pretty good and longer than an average laptop, but it clearly is inferior to Windows in that category. Of course, battery life will vary depending upon your usage, but that four hour figure can easily be extended by quite a margin once you disable some peripherals, especially WiFi and Bluetooth. Another efficient way to improve your uptime is to leave power saving features on like they will be in a normal usage pattern and decrease screen brightness."