Replacing Gateway noteboon - ASUS U56E HP dv7

[kep55]

Well, my Gatewat MX-7120 is close to finally biting the dust. It's been a most faithful warhorse over the past 6 years. Went to Tanzania, Canada, The Bahamas, even California with nary a hiccup. (FWIW - In Africa all I needed to do was attach a plug adapter and plug it in. Didn't even need a voltage converter.) So, since I can now barely get 2 hours life out of it on battery and back-light for the screen is getting even funkier I want to replace it. One thing I'm insisting on is LONG battery life, numeric keypad, and a minimum 15.6" screen.
I saw in the recent Office Depot flyer they had the ASUS U56E-RBL7 (Intel Core-5) and U56E-RBL5 (Intel Core-3) with claimed life of 6+ hours. That's more than twice what my Gateway had new.
Are these Office Depot only machines since I can find nothing on them even at the ASUS web site? I've a lot of good things about ASUS. Any other laptops come close in specs?
Does anyone having to say about the HP Pavilion line? They have on, a dv7 I think, that has about the same specs bot only around 6 hours battery life.

 

[Abyssalx]

HP build quality is contested upon but the acclaimed battery life on the 9-cell batteries they sell is good. Some of Lenovo's Thinkpad series claims 25+ hours of battery life, if you're willing to put some weight on it. Now that's some battery life. But it all depends on your budget.

http/shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&current-category-id=158789389E999C7AFD948ECE84C546E5&action=init

They all have an i5 processor, and choosing the 9cell, and the additional slice battery, gives you up to 30 hours, from what I've been reading. I haven't done a ton of research on this however, so I don't know if there are any catches or whatnot.

 

[kep55]

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, I need a minimum 15.6" screen, 17" is better. And why would I want to go back to 80's with a screen that size or smaller?