The battery life did go up dramatically. I ran it the whole day today and got an extra hour out of it. Wifi on all day. When I change the adapter power setting to medium to low, battery life goes down accordingly.
As for today’s test, its not scientific, but real world actual usage. I had it on at 1pm, had it off for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours and had it on all day after that. Usage includes mostly web browsing. 1 hour was used to transfer huge files via the ethernet port. It is 9:10pm right now, and my battery shows 18% and 1:19 minutes left.
As for the wireless connectivity, I have the linksys gaming router wrt330n. My speed fluctuates between 135 to 180 on the samsung, and 180-230 on the dell (both have the intel 5300). I guess Dell 15.4 incher has better antenna built in. Another difference is that the dell uses vista. Vista software from intel is completely different from the xp version. That might have something to do with it.
Anyhow, real world usage shows 8 megaBYTES per second about 25 feet away from router. That’s wireless to ethernet.
Wireless to wireless from dell to samsung cut bandwidth in half. Actually, more like 60-70%. Transfer speed dropped 8megabytes to 2-3megabytes per second. I think the router splits the bandwidth and both using the same wireless spectrum interferes with each other.
I’m considering getting a linksys 610n for simultaneous dual band.
One side note, intel 5300 caused my linksys wrt330n to crash 4 times. 3 times while i was testing the two computers. Once was when I was just browsing. I have never had these crashes for 2 years with the dell wireless 1500n and the samsung nc10 wireless used for 2 months. So this is a worrisome since it complete crashes the entire network and leaves my alarm and voip useless.
I had adjusted a few settings in the router and changed my channels. I hope this will fix it. If not, its either a new router or remove the 5300. Im leaning towards getting a new router because opening the sammy is such a pain, especially at the hinges.