Laptop Battery? Problem?

[KayKay]

My situation is as follows. I have a battery that came with my laptop, and it appears to be in good condition, after using the dell notebook battery faq.

it says that if i hold down the battery test button, i can read the lights and it will tell me how good my battery is. And it checks out ok
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/...teries_faq?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd#faq15

The problem is that my laptop dies after 20 minutes of use

I recently bought another battery, which checks out ok using the battery test button.

My laptop dies after 20 minutes of use with this one as well.

My question is, could it be something other than the battery?

 

[inhotep]

You should do more investigting and provide more info. YOu should check the battey meter in windows to see how fast the battery drain before it shuts down (how long does it take from 100% to 10%), if the battery is fully charged, is your notebook running at max speed constantly, how many cells in battery, what other hardware could cause this problem. For instance, is your screen at the highest brightness setting, are you using notebook to power other things like USB mouse, USB drive, USB light,etc.
YOu need to provide more info hehe

 

[KayKay]

the battery goes down to 10% from 100% in essentially 15 minutes

i have nothing plugged into the laptop, and the screen dims automatically when i pull the AC adapter out. I run it at battery optimized speed (speed step).

is there any way the battery meter is totally wrong?

 

[inhotep]

ok kind of notebook do you have? and list the spec.s

 

[cheesehead]

I believe that the meter runs on voltage. If some of your cells are fragged but not others, or the cells are simply losing capacity because they are old, they may recharge to the normal voltage. The meter is really only a measure of the percentage of the cells left, not how much capacity they have.

 

[inhotep]

I think it's measuring watts per hour used with watts capasity. It could be the sensor too, but he is still not providing enough info. Like, after the notebook shots down, does his battery pack still show it has enough charge? how many cells? li-ion or ni? how many watts is written on his battery? CPU load 100%?, etc, etc, how old is the laptop, etc.

 

[KayKay]

laptop is in my sig

its a few years old

the battery is li-on, 14.8 v X 3.5 A

I remember discharging one battery and tried the test on it, and it was not even turning on. it could be the batteries are shot, in which case that is not good.