Terrible battery life on new laptop...

[SenorD]

Had this built for me...specs:

Intel P4 @ 3.2GHz 800FSB 512KB
SiS 648 FX 800FSB DDR333 AGP8X Platform w/Audio & LAN Mainboard
1024 MB PC2700 333MHz DDR MEMORY (Kingston)
60GB 7200RPM ULTRA ATA 100 HARD DRIVE
MOBILE ATI RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB VIDEO CARD
8X DVD & 24/16/24 CDRW COMBO DRIVE
15.4" WXGA WIDE-SCREEN TFT LCD DISPLAY Max: 1280x800 PIXELS
BUILT-IN AC 97 SOUND
Built in 802.11G wireless card
Batt. is a Li-Ion 8-Cell Pack, 14.4V x4400 mAh

Running XP Pro SP2

Sorry about mostly caps, copied direct from site.

I do normally use a wireless Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 2.0, but even without it, I still get crappy batt. life.

My battery life will range from 30 minutes to an hour on a full charge, I really dont understand it. I have to resort to using AC power, almost at all times.

Would a new battery be the best bet? Or is there something I'm missing here...

Thanks for the help

 

[phisrow]

If the machine is new, the battery probably isn't the problem. It could just be, unfortunately, that the battery life on that machine sucks. Without more information I cannot say for sure; but those specs look a lot like the classic "lan party laptop". Quite powerful, and certainly cheaper than a centrino jobby at the same performance level, but not even designed for more than an hour unplugged. If you could drop us the link to the site you purchased if from, we might be able to say for sure.

 

[vegetation]

There's two reasons why you are getting such bad battery life. First, you have a P4 which is very power hungry even during idle. Second, and most importantly, your battery capacity rating is extremely low, is there any battery offered that is better (bigger)? You simply got too little juice stored and your P4 eats up whats there in a very quick amount of time.

 

[cirthix]

i wonder...... could it be taht P4 IN THER?? nah, couldnt be (sarcasm)

 

[SenorD]

Originally posted by: vegetation
There's two reasons why you are getting such bad battery life. First, you have a P4 which is very power hungry even during idle. Second, and most importantly, your battery capacity rating is extremely low, is there any battery offered that is better (bigger)? You simply got too little juice stored and your P4 eats up whats there in a very quick amount of time.

Any suggestions on a new battery? The one I received was the only one offered, except for the fact that multiples could be purchased. I was thinking of shelling out as much as needed and getting a very high quality, high capacity one. I mean, why not do it now instead of suffering from problems for the years that I own this.

Site purchased from is www.cyberpowersystem.com/ as recommended to me by a good friend.
It is the X5-6000 Widescreen laptop with a few changes in the configuraton. And yes, this laptop is mostly for gaming.

 

[phisrow]

Your laptop doesn't seem to have any higher capacity batteries available(from the manufacturer anyway) so an outboard battery might be just the ticket. It will add some weight to your kit; but your runtime will pretty much be limited by your willingness to haul heavy objects about. The most elegant solution would be an off-the-shelf Lithium Ion pack.
http://www.bixnet.com/suslloruntie.html
http://www.compusa.com/product...0203103&pfp=BROWSE
Those two just happened to be at the top of the google search, I don't know offhand what the best brand is.
If you are on a budget that flinches at 2 to 3 hundred dollar battery packs, you can try your hand at building your own. The easiest, and probably cheapest, way to do this is to obtain a small 12 volt sealed lead acid battery (often called an SLA or gellcell) and an inverter. A decent 12 volt SLA brick, not-too-nasty charger to match, and small inverter can probably be yours for circa 100 dollars. (you'll also end up with an inverter for use in the car out of the deal). This setup will be heavy and not terribly efficient; but SLAs are cheap relative to their capacity, so you can easily enough just shove a couple in your backpack and be able to run your system for hours off of them(if you go for this, don't let the batteries stay flat for long, they die unless you recharge them promptly).
Slightly upmarket would be hacking up a proper DC battery pack out of NIMH cells. http://www.dansdata.com/cambattery.htm provides a good guide to doing so, although it is biased towards digital cameras. A DC pack for your laptop should work the same way(though the currents will be higher and the voltages somewhat different, so be careful).
If you want more specific advice about building battery packs, post all the information you can find from your AC adapter and we might be able to provide you with more specifics.

Best of luck in any case(my previous laptop got down to 5 minutes battery life by the end, and I know how much it sucks to have to stick to the wall.)

 

[WackyDan]

"Intel P4 @ 3.2GHz 800FSB 512KB "

There's that.

There is also the mobility 9700......More power hungry than most...

Gig of ram will help consume

But.... one of the other big battery drainers in that Lappy is the WIDESCREEN.

If you are using the 802.11 at the same time..... Bingo.

Multiple elements in that box are contributing to the battery runtime issue.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Best Buy has a modular battery system made by Valence. Heard its a pretty good and easy to use setup, check it out

 

[SenorD]

I'm currently looking at modular batteries, thanks for all your help.

 

[blahblah99]

Originally posted by: WackyDan
"Intel P4 @ 3.2GHz 800FSB 512KB "

There's that.

There is also the mobility 9700......More power hungry than most...

Gig of ram will help consume

But.... one of the other big battery drainers in that Lappy is the WIDESCREEN.

If you are using the 802.11 at the same time..... Bingo.

Multiple elements in that box are contributing to the battery runtime issue.

I don't think its the widescreen unless he has the brightness all the way up.

The majority of cause is the P4 cpu, the radeon 9700 pro, the 7200rpm hard drive, and the 1GB of memory, in that order.

My Pentium M 1.7GHZ with 768MB of ram and 5400rpm hard drive survives over 4 hrs on a full charge doing web browsing/light load work. Forgot to say I have a 15.4" WUXGA screen, and a radeon 9200.

 

[DaFinn]

Yup, P4= no battery life. I can work nearly 6hrs on my T41p (P-M 1,7/1Gb/60Gb HDD 7200rpm/Ati FireGL T2 128Mb/dvd-cdrw/wlan/BT/SC/modem/1Gb NIC/14"TFT 1400x1050/...) running of a 9cell battery.

 

[Maverick2002]

If you're going for a P4 instead of Centrino expect crappy battery life. I've had an Inspiron 8200 for about 2 years now, P4 1.6 - get about 30 minutes of battery life now, down from an hour or so.

 

[bigal40]

Originally posted by: WackyDan
"Intel P4 @ 3.2GHz 800FSB 512KB "

There's that.

There is also the mobility 9700......More power hungry than most...

Gig of ram will help consume

But.... one of the other big battery drainers in that Lappy is the WIDESCREEN.

If you are using the 802.11 at the same time..... Bingo.

Multiple elements in that box are contributing to the battery runtime issue.

that 7200rpm HD is eating up power too

i hate to say this but you can't expect much better than an hour of battery life

 

[jvarszegi]

that 7200rpm HD is eating up power too

Not necessarily. I upgraded my laptop to a Hitachi 7200 RPM drive and picked up a few minutes of battery life. It's got a smaller head than most drives, which leads to reduced power consumption. Spindle speed isn't everything when you reckon these things.

 

[Frightcrawler]

The reason why his battery life is so low is because of 3 *main* reasons.
1) Mobility Radeon 9700
2) P4 3.2
3) EIGHT CELL LI-ION! gah!

I think you should try to get a bigger capacity battery. If you can't, you should just not use the battery.
Or if you really want to, you can return it and get another laptop.

 

[TheLonelyPhoenix]

Yeah, as just about everyone else in this thread has told you, you've got several high drain components packed in there (P4 Proc, 9700 Pro Vid, lots of RAM, 7200 RPM HD) and a widescreen. I'd be surprised if you got more than an hour out of a typical battery. Turn down the brightness of your screen and avoid spinning up the hard drive/optical drive as much as possible. Basically tho, I don't think its going to get much better unless you start buying spare batteries.

 

[sciencewhiz]

That battery is between my t40's normal battery and extended battery. However, as everyone else said, your laptop has just about every power hungry part possible.