Laptop Battery

[jtwhite]

I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 and it's not even a year old yet. The battery will only last about 25-35 minutes on the lowest setting. About 15 minutes with full screen brightness.

Is it normal for the battery to suck that much already?

[DefecTalisman]

I am not sure about it being normal, but I have a HP thats 2 years old now. When I got the thing my battery life was about the same, now its even worse With something plugged in to USB on lowest settings I get about 10-15mins With 2 USB devices it gets shorter.

[ah-blabla]

I had a laptop (acer) that after two years was the same: reported life was 20 mins, it actually ran for 40 though. (I simply disabled powering off with low battery, and had to make sure I did it myself.

On the other hand I have a laptop from 2003 that still runs 3 hours on battery. However originally it was 6-8 hours.

[Sharky]

What's the capacity of the battery? And has it always been that atrocious? I have two 8-cell 14.8v 4460mAh (66WHr) batteries powering my 5 year old P4-m Dell laptop, and it can go for 6-8 hours on the power save setting, even longer if I don't use the laptop display (ie, using the TV/external monitor).

[Smith6612]

What are your laptop specs and what is the rating of the battery? If you're running Vista, changing things to the Power Save mode in the Control Panel can do wonders, and if you have a non-Intel video card, it helps to try other drivers as well. But still, for a laptop that's pretty bad. They should at least run for 2 hours unless it's a power hungry thing such as those "gaming" laptops.

What also helps is to boot the laptop off the battery and then plug it in once Windows starts loading. That will downclock both the video card (if it's one that supports doing so) as well as the processor. My 11 year old laptop when on battery if I had Intel SpeedStep enabled in the BIOS would downclock itself from 600Mhz to 500Mhz if I booted it off the battery, and would not go to full speed until I shut down the laptop, counted to 3, and turned it back on. It did give me 20 minutes of the battery by doing this.

[naguissa]

It depends on the use you have made of it. I've a 8-cell battery cheap computer 3-years aged and stills get a little more than 2 hours. I use it with power plug if I can (althought I used it at train, bus, outdoor, so battery has been middle-used).

Lithium batteries, as all others, has limited number of uses. If you always has battery plugged, it discharges a little and starts charging (100% -> 95% -> 100% -> ...) and this shorts it's life.

[playminigames]

yea i had to buy a new battery because mine was down to about 20 mins at the most, the new one holds up to 3 hours, i think it is normal for it to die down.

Good luck

[Sharky]

It depends on the use you have made of it. I've a 8-cell battery cheap computer 3-years aged and stills get a little more than 2 hours. I use it with power plug if I can (althought I used it at train, bus, outdoor, so battery has been middle-used).

Lithium batteries, as all others, has limited number of uses. If you always has battery plugged, it discharges a little and starts charging (100% -> 95% -> 100% -> ...) and this shorts it's life.

Not all laptops exhibit this behaviour. And lithium batteries have less of a memory effect than nickel based ones too.

[boris333]

After a year or two, most laptop batteries start to get pretty soft, so that seems relatively normal.

About the only advice I can give you is to go online and look at how much a new battery will cost. You may want to consider picking up two, as Dell laptops have a horrible record on batteries (though, in all fairness, so do most manufacturers).

[eyemdee]

My problem is slightly different although I suspect the cause is the same. The power meter reports 48.08 hours available when charged at 100%, then a few minutes later when running on battery, reports 3 hours available, 7% charged. Then it goes off!! Actual battery life must be about 10 minutes. I am trying recalibration as we speak but I fear that will do little...!