A laptop equipped with wireless capabilities in effect has a small radio transmitter that has a power of a few watts. Like any peice of electronics this runs off power, it will therefore, if actually turned on, increase power consumption over and above the normal so you can guess the result on the battery. Many rechargeable cells need regular charge discharge cycles, a battery that has power will loose this charge after a while and therefore if not used on mains or battery in between time will get trickle charged when the laptop is next used without having full discharged. Power cycling without full discharge cycle can reduce battery performance, how much depends a bit on the type of battery design. Ni-Cad batteries for example are quite notorious, Lthium Ion are better. A bit of regular use off mains is helpful in this respect. Regards. Tristram Llewellyn Sight and Sound Technology Technical Support www.sightandsound.co.uk ----- Original Message ----- From: TrueBlue To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 10:47 AM Subject: [access-uk] surely not? hi guys, surely this can't be true. I have been told from people on other mailing lists, that if yu connect yur laptop wirelessly to the Internet, it will run down the Laptops battery, quicker than using a ethernet cable. Can this be really true?. Also on the same list, the suggestion is that it is a bad Idea to run the Laptop VIA the power adaptor. Finally, is it better to purchase an external Laptop keyboard?. Billy Billy