[Dead Corpse]

Vista is twitchy, but should be better than XP as far as power management is concerned. Set the power settings to Laptop and the default settings oughta be ok. They are easy enough to tweak later if you don't like the results.

I shut mine down if I'm not going to be on for a while. I let it sleep if I close the lid. I let it hibernate if it sits open and plugged in for too long.

YMMV...

[Monkey Face]

What’s the average life of a laptop under those conditions? Ballpark.

How are you feeling, now? Are you over the worst of what you had?