[TomH]

Battery life will ultimately depend on how much you are asking from the computer. Now the 2 things that will kill battery life is the screen brightness (the brighter, the shorter) and Wifi. Now newer laptops and netbooks are more efficient with wifi, but I would not expect 10 hours out of a battery, mostly because those times are from idling systems. My laptop usually will say 4 hours when I am on battery, surfing the internet and running other small programs, although Dell says it can go up to 8. My point is that maybe for the first few uses, you could squeeze out maybe 10 if you disable anything unnecessary, but don't expect that it will last all day at a comptitetion. I'd recommend you charge them when you can (like at lunch). And for any specific models, I really have nothing that I can recommend, but if you can get something with a decent battery life, and take half of it, and it can still do (like the one above, and if 5.5 is still good, then consider it), but take a look at the specs, they can help.