Laptops are the epitome of convenience and mobile work efficiency. And that makes battery life an especially key feature to consider when shopping for laptops—nobody wants to find themselves out of power.

Nearly every computer manufacturer advertizes their laptops as having X hours of battery life. That can be useful number when comparing one to another during the buying process. But a laptop’s battery life isn’t like its weight or screen size—a static, easily quantifiable figure. Your real-life battery performance is greatly affected by how you use your laptop. The good news being that you can take an active role in extending the hours of laptop time you can get between charges.

Here are seven simple tips for doing exactly that:

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Black is the color of nearly every iPhone (and other cell phones), iPod (and other MP3 players), iPad (and other tablet computers) and Kindle (and other e-book readers). So putting a skin covering on your electronics devices is as much about making it distinctive as about protecting it. Fortunately, GelaSkins has you covered in both regards. Their skins are both durable and personality-full.

Gelaskins are available for a huge variety of gadgets, including virtually every major smartphone, all the recent models of the iPod and Zune and the most popular ebook readers, gaming consoles and Apple MacBooks variations. You can even get a skin for a Magic Trackpad.

For each of those, you can choose from hundreds of pre-designed skins or—and we find this very cool—design your own.

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Microsoft and Apple, watch out. Google is taking direct aim at you with their Chromebooks—laptops than run the Google-controlled Chrome operating system.

Unlike computers that operate Microsoft Windows or the Mac OS or even Linux, Chromebooks are not designed to run a lot of software stored locally on a hard drive. Instead, Chromebooks link up to Google’s (and other’s) online services. The applications Chromebooks run, the data they produce and the files they use, it is all stored on internet servers collectively known as “the cloud.”

Chromebooks’ approach is a semi-radical move away from hard drive-based personal computers. Naturally, it comes with pros and cons:

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The day may come when machines overthrow the human race and our robot overlords force us mortals to serve at their will. Until then, we can suggest going for a meal at the Hajime Robot Restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand.

At the Hajime robots not only serve food to customers but also dance for them. (This makes the Hajime Robot Restaurant is the only establishment in Bangkok that has a tagline promising to “serve your every need” and that features dancing waiters and that’s also child-friendly).

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RIP, Flip camcorder. Today your parent company, Cisco, announced it is will be ceasing your production.

Cisco’s announcement puzzles Spot Cool Stuff at bit. Flip was a trusted brand with strong sales—at the time of writing its products ranked 3rd, 7th, 8th and 10th on Amazon’s list of top selling camcorders. Perhaps with camcorders being incorporated into an increasing variety of products—netbooks, tablets, smartphones, ultra-compact cameras, and so on—Cisco felt the Flip couldn’t keep up.

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Would you rather have a tablet or netbook computer? That can be a tough choice. Do you choose a built-in keyboard or a touchscreen? Mobiles apps or a full operating system?

Dell doesn’t want you to have to choose. Instead, they sought to offer the best of both worlds in their new device: the Dell Inspiron Duo convertible.

When folded open, the Inspiron Duo looks like a notebook. It acts like one too, running a full version of Windows 7 Home Premium. Then fold down the top, flip the screen open, and the Inspiron Duo becomes a touchscreen tablet PC running a mobile version of Windows 7.

Here’s Spot Cool Stuff’s take on the pros and cons of this netbook-tablet computer:

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The 2011 updated version of the Apple MacBook Pro is out. The majority of the improvements over the previous MacBook Pro incarnation are performance related. The most significant of those: new quad-core Intel processors that increase speed nearly 100%. There’s also a new graphics processor (three times faster than the old MacBooks), an HD camera for video chats, a somewhat more powerful battery and a “Thunderbolt” port that can connect to HD displays and transfer data at a blazing 10GB per second.

Though every new MacBook Pro has those improvements not every model offers the same configuration. You, the consumer, have choices to make. 4GB of memory or 8GB? An HDD or flash drive? The speed of the Intel i5 processor vs the i7? And so on.

Here’s Spot Cool Stuff’s take on how to most cost-efficiently configure the latest generation Apple MacBook Pro.

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For much of the early and mid 20th century Leica was the world’s most stylish and sophisticated camera manufacturer.

The father of modern photojournalism, Henri Cartier-Bresson, used a Leica camera for his work. While covering World War II he was found himself on the verge of being captured by the enemy. Not only did Cartier-Bresson bury his Leica to prevent it from falling into Nazi hands but made the dangerous mid-war journey to retrieve it after escaping from a POW camp!

In 1954 Leica introduced the M series, which almost single-handedly gave birth to the class of “professional amateur” photographer. Leica’s M cameras allowed for serious photographers (including the grandfather of Spot Cool Stuff) to purchase equipment very much like what high-end photographers were using but at a fraction of the price.

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