HP recently announced a breakthrough in laptop batteries: up to 24 hours of continuous usage on a single charge. The new HP EliteBook 6930p (from $1,199) can deliver up to 24 hours of battery run time when configured with an optional ultra-capacity 12-cell battery ($189). The 4.7-pound laptop features a 14.1-inch widescreen LCD display (or it’s available with an optional mercury-free Illumi-Lite LED display), Intel Core 2 Duo processor, shock-resistant 160GB hard drive, and up to 4GB of system memory.

“All-day computing has been the holy grail of notebook computing,” said Ted Clark, senior vice president and general manager of HP’s notebook global business unit, in a company release. “With the HP EliteBook 6930p, customers no longer have to worry about their notebook battery running out before their workday is over.”

Naturally, what you do on your laptop can affect battery performance greatly. For example, word processing doesn’t eat away at system resources, compared to, say, online gaming or video editing.