Replace laptop battery?

[CDC Mail Guy]

Wife's Dell Inspiron 2200 is over 2 years old now. Will only stay on for about 20 minutes before it gives her the warning that it needs to be plugged in. I went under Control Panel and into Power Options, and basically set everything under battery options to about 2 hours thinking that would fix the problem, but it hasn't.

Any ideas?

 

[TheStu]

Well, a battery's available life goes down with age. Mine delivers only about 70% of its initial total life, and it is almost a year old. So since that one is 2 years old, and if you either used the battery a lot, or recharge it a lot, then the battery will lose lots of life.

 

[CDC Mail Guy]

I guess it needs replacing then! Thanks for the info. Nothing lasts forever after all