Okay, 25 hours…but exactly how ugly and how heavy is this battery? For me there is a unavoidable diminishing return for power as the size and weight go up. In fact that chart would have a geometric progression so that what this 9 cell battery would look like and how much it would weigh would totally sour me on having it provide a few more hours of use.

Also, if you weren't using the hdd, how would you watch movies, etc? Thus … whats the point?

We're living the dream here, people. I'd be *more* than happy to “settle” for 18 hours of battery life on a single charge…

I think that's awesome! More the merrier. This kind of battery life wasn't possible or thinkable a decade ago. I bet one day we won't need to plug-in to recharge and gadgets would either constantly recharge through a combination of wireless, solar, and piezo. Come on debbie downers, think outside the box!

It isn't so much the SSD as the new chipset and cpu combination. The chipset found in most netbooks is quite old and inefficient. The new poulsbo chipset in the U115 is designed to be energy efficient and coupled with an Atom cpu which is even more efficient than the ones found in other netbooks.

Unfortunately all this improved stuff does come at a higher price than the old material.

Niiiice. I've see the battery and it's not to bad. The bottom sticks out a little as if the netbook is propped on some type of platform. Hey, it's 25 hours. That's pretty good. I don't think it's that heavy either. I have a U100 that's currently on a 9-cell battery and I feel slight difference between the weight from when I only had the 6-cell battery. I think the upgrade is definitely worth it.