Battery Life Question for Dell Lattitude E6420

[Borg20001]

I have a year old Dell E6420 with the standard 6 cell battery. I have it constantly plugged into the power adapter or to the docking station.

Initially I had great battery life, probably 5 - 6 hours. Now it barely lasts 2 hours.

Is there still a battery "memory" problem with the current laptops?

Should I have not kept it plugged in to power all the time and instead let it run down and drain it as low as possible with normal use and then plug it in to recharge it once it has mostly completely drained the battery?

This summer, my son was watching a lot of videos and movies on the laptop at night and he'd have it hooked up to power as well.

Is there anything I can do moving forward to better preserve the battery life?

Should I just buy another battery (found a bunch at Amazon going for about $60 or so after shipping)?

And if I do buy another battery, is there any better protocol I should follow to prevent this from happening again - (if that is possible)?

Thanks,

 

[C1]

LOL, how about that. It dont take long for "new" to get old (or well used). (Corky has a good system of managing batteries and that is by removing them and storing them in a cool/dry place at 50% charge till needed.)

Leaving the battery plugged in probably only affects it due to increased exposure to heat (from the computer) plus it is maintained at a high charge level which is not optimal for extended battery shelf life.

What's now so funny is some guy on another forum that I responded to who wanted to buy a fourth computer and which I told him was going to up his maintenance cost for batteries gave all this shit about how everything was so great because it was new - ya right.

 

[Borg20001]

LOL, how about that. It dont take long for "new" to get old (or well used). (Corky has a good system of managing batteries and that is by removing them and storing them in a cool/dry place at 50% charge till needed.)

Leaving the battery plugged in probably only affects it due to increased exposure to heat (from the computer) plus it is maintained at a high charge level which is not optimal for extended battery shelf life.

What's now so funny is some guy on another forum that I responded to who wanted to buy a fourth computer and which I told him was going to up his maintenance cost for batteries gave all this shit about how everything was so great because it was new - ya right.

thx for the feedback. So based on what you're saying, would it be worthwhile to get one of those laptop cooling fans for when it is sitting plugged into the power cord so that I can try to minimize the heat exposure from the PC to the battery?

 

[C1]

Naaahh. Use a fan to help keep your basic unit temperature down if seems to get hot or even quite warm.

If you want to squeeze battery life then use Corky G's method - remove the battery and store at 50% capacity till needed and meanwhile just use the external power for the notebook operation.

Battery expense is a natural phenomenon of computer mobility. Pretty much no matter what happens, you will want to be replacing the battery in four years (even with the best of care) and as little as three years after significant use. Even if you dont use a battery, it will most likely not be very effective after 5 years of age.

 

[krumme]

Writing on a Dell 6420 now, with extended battery, last for 7-10h with an ssd. 1 year old.

I never let it go under 20% and prefer to charge when at 30-40%.
I now use a new samsung 9 x3c series but for at year i have used the 6420 uncorded each day.

No need to do all sorts of tricks, just make shure you never get under 20%. You current battery probably had an error or you drained it like 100 times?

 

[kbp]

Lenovo's have a battery program that keeps it at < 50%.
if you decide to go "cordless" you just change the setting and give it about an hour and it charges up full.

 

[Borg20001]

Naaahh. Use a fan to help keep your basic unit temperature down if seems to get hot or even quite warm.

If you want to squeeze battery life then use Corky G's method - remove the battery and store at 50% capacity till needed and meanwhile just use the external power for the notebook operation.

Battery expense is a natural phenomenon of computer mobility. Pretty much no matter what happens, you will want to be replacing the battery in four years (even with the best of care) and as little as three years after significant use. Even if you dont use a battery, it will most likely not be very effective after 5 years of age.

Thanks for the tips.

So here's a dumb question: Does watching videos (either streaming content or DVDs) sap battery power more than just surfing the web etc.? I would think so, but since I have experts here, I thought it'd be a worthwhile question.

Also (since I don't know who Corky G is), I can see pulling the battery and storing it until I need to use it (say on a trip or whatever) and just run on the straight power hook up - but does it need to be stored at 50% power or can I just take it out now and store it (it's probably near 100% since it has been sitting in the laptop while its been docked for a while now.)

thanks for the feedback.

 

[Blain]

So here's a dumb question: Does watching videos (either streaming content or DVDs) sap battery power more than just surfing the web etc.? I would think so, but since I have experts here, I thought it'd be a worthwhile question.

Generally, watching video uses slightly (very slightly), more battery than simple surfing alone.
If you drop the screen resolution down, you can eek out a bit more movie time.

 

[stevech]

My Dell E6500 (large LCD screen) gets about 2.5 to 3.5 hours when working in MS Office stuff.

Watching movies uses a lot more battery because the video decoding takes a lot more CPU time. And a movie on laptop's disk would have more I/O and the disk would be less likely to spin-down in idle.

When I replaced the disk with a small sized solid state disk, the battery life increased well beyond the number, above.