Yes they can. And some more demanding things as well. Especially the AMD variants have some impressive performance.

I get 5 hours out of mine with some heavier loads throughout the day. And 8 hours if I just browse, write down notes or read stuff. I’m using Fedora 39

I’m in Batch 5 too and I received my “Shipping now” E-Mail earlier today. Now I’m waiting impatiently for it to arrive in Austria.

Edit: 7 7840U with just 32 GB RAM already installed. No charger, no OS, no SSD.