Notebook battery life when unused

[Lemon law]

I recently inherited a HP notebook. Hardly ever used and only a hair over 1 year old.
Somewhat step one was to charge the battery with an AC adapter while adding my set of software.

In a number of hours, the battery was completely charged, at which point I shut everything down,
hopped on a plane, and flew home without turning on the notebook.

Some two days later I again turned on the notebook, only to find out two days of total lack of use
had drained 10% of the battery.

That to me sounds like a huge loss of battery power. Is this normal? And i am pretty sure its a lithium battery rather than a Nickle hydride.

 

[ecom]

Are you sure it wasn't in standby? Did you let it shut down completely before closing the lid?

 

[alimoalem]

I have an HP laptop (but I haven't used it in a few months). You said it's over a year old. Given my experience with HP, it probably took 10% battery life just to boot up.

 

[TheStu]

You did not check the life of the battery before hand, so you have no way of knowing how much that 10% really is. If the battery was originally 4000mA and could last, say... 2 hours and was a bad battery (bad cells slip through QA) to begin with, that number might be 1000mA now and so that 10% loss is a little more drastic.

It could also be that the computer has no idea what the capacity of the battery is, and is just guessing. You need to completely run down the battery, recharge it, run it down again, and recharge it again. That should let the OS and the system know what the battery can do.

 

[Lemon law]

Originally posted by: ecom
Are you sure it wasn't in standby? Did you let it shut down completely before closing the lid?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, I am sure it was shut down.

 

[corkyg]

Again . . . how old is the battery? When did you last calibrate it? Capacity decreases fairly quickly after 2 years of use. IOW, the total capacity may now be much less, so that a normal usage of maintenance of BIOS, etc., takes a higher percentage of the total available.

By calibration I mean what TheStu suggests.

 

[Kasary]

run down the battery, recharge it, run it down again, and recharge it again?it's so troublesome

 

[corkyg]

"it's so troublesome"

So is maintaining any complex piece of hardware, eg., your car. Keep in mind it is not mandatory or required - just adviseable.