Laptops Powered by AA Batteries (Seriously)
And some of them run an impressively long time on a single set of Double-A's.
If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “Gee, I sure do wish I could run my laptop on AA batteries”… boy are you in luck.
What follows is a list of laptops (or things that are very laptop-like) that can be powered entirely on replaceable AA batteries.
Atari ST Book
Released in 1991, the Atari ST Book was an absolute marvel. Slim (only 1.4” thick), light (4.2 lbs), and plenty powerful for a portable of the day (4MB of RAM, 120 MB HD).
Plus… the darn thing ran for 10 hours on 7 AA batteries (a rechargeable battery pack was also available).
TRS-80 Model 100
Released way back in 1983, the TRS-80 Model 100 is a pretty limited machine by today’s standards (especially compared to the likes of the Atari ST Book). 24k of memory. 240x64 display. But it also has a big, desktop style keyboard that is an absolute joy to type on and a built-in BASIC.
And it runs for a full 20 hours (I’ve done better than that with mine) off of just 4 AA’s.
To put that in comparison, the originally Gameboy also used 4 AA’s… and tended to get 15 hours (give or take) of play time.
HP OmniBook 300
Ah, the OmniBook line. Small. Light. With that adorable little “pop out mouse”.
The OmniBook 300, released in 1994, had a 386 CPUunder the hood, a monochrome VGA display and could run for up to 9 hours off of 4 AA batteries (when using the Flash storage model… the spinning hard drive model could manage around 5+ hours).
There were also 486-based models, including the HP OmniBook 425, that also ran off 4 AA batteries.
HP 200LX
Ok. So the HP 200LX (and the 100LX and 95LX) are technically “palmtops”. But they run a full, regular version of MS-DOS 5.0, are powered by an Intel x86 CPU (the 80186), and can have up to 4 MB of RAM. Making them a pretty noteworthy DOS portable.
Powered by two AA batteries and clocking in at a whopping 40 hours of battery life. I have one of these. Can confirm that the battery life is astoundingly good.
Alphasmart Dana
The Dana is a fascinating machine. A slab form factor, touch screen, PalmOS device will a full keyboard. Running PalmOS 4.1.2, with a super wide 560x160 display, 16 MB of memory… this is a true “PalmOS laptop”. Even has USB, SD card slots and (in later revision) WiFi. No joke.
And 40 hours of battery life (with the backlight off, 20+ with backlight turned on) via only 3 AA batteries.
Gecko EduBook
Here’s a somewhat more modern entry: The 2009 Gecko EduBook.
A “netbook” class laptop, shipping with Windows XP, juiced up by 8 AA batteries. Those eight batteries bring in only around 4 hours of battery life (a whole heaping helping less than everything else on this list).
But, hey. It’s running XP. And can probably run Linux. So… there’s that.
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