How much battery life does a student's laptop need?

I didn’t use one in college but I travel with one almost everyday. I will say battery level is very important. I would bet that your college won’t have an outlet for every student so you will need your battery to be charged before each class. The logistics for each student to have an outlet just won’t work. My MacBook is almost 3 years old and still holds about a 3 hour charge. My wife’s brand new Macbook Pro has about 5 hours of charge. If you want a PC, someone else would have to help you. I only have a Mac. Some PC’s probably have great battery life. I just don’t know about them.

A few hours at least.
Mine is not good that way, but it is a 17 inch display with two hard drives.

My longest classes are an hour and a half, so I would recommend at least two hours. A lot of my classrooms have outlets.

If you don’t mind a smaller-sized laptop, I would suggest a net-book for traveling. Mine is perfect for a full day of classes; it lasts for 8½ hours with only one charge.

Running out of battery life is a pain. Like @missingbite I travel with one a lot, and it’s humorous how your day can become a competition for outlet space. Someone unplugs in a public spot and three people jump for it like hungry dogs going for a bone.

I would say three hours minimum. You could get a spare battery when you buy the machine and instantly double your time.

Or find a machine with long battery life. Macs I think are all excellent that way. Netbooks with 6 cell batteries, too. I bought an Acer 5810 Timeline specifically for the 8 hour battery life.

According to actual reviews, the Toshiba T135 outlasts even @jaytkay‘s Timeline.. so long as you have the Intel CPU. The AMD chip loses a couple of hours. And the T135’s replacement, the T235 is even better at a listed run time of up to 8.93 hours.

For a decently full class schedule and allowing for the fact that you may not remember or be able to recharge, you really need battery life of at least 6 hours, though you do not need to sacrifice power and buy a netbook to get that sort of life.

@jaytkay Please tell me you got one with the SU4100! It has the same battery life as the SU2700, but is much faster.