Way to really test the ability of a Laptop Battery....

[marketsons1985]

I've had an HP laptop for about 2 years, it was a replacement for a lemon laptop I had before. I've gone through 2 proper batteries and 2 improper batteries for this laptop, and I'm on my 3rd battery, in less than a year. I've got a PSP warranty until FEB 08 that still covers batteries, apparently they stopped counting batteries towards no-lemons starting last year.

Best Buy tried to replace my battery twice last summer with non-OEM ones that didn't work with my laptop at all, I got a message when I turned my computer on that this battery wasn't compatible with my laptop.

Fast forward to now, I just got my 3rd replacement battery, and if this goes bad I think I have a case with the no-lemon law act, *sigh* again. I hate HP laptops.

Best Buy mentioned that this might be an internal issue on my laptop, but it doesn't seem to kill batteries until a couple months down the line. Now my problem is, this summer I'll be very reliant on my laptop (working in an IT job for the School of Education as essentially a level 1 tech) and can't have it die in the middle of the summer on me. I want to check it earlier rather than later to see if this battery will go bad.

Should I just charge it, run it down, charge it again to see if it'l hold a charge? I can't believe that it's just bad luck that I've gotten 2 bad laptop batteries.

What options do I have for checking the stability, and ability of this laptop? It's currently lasting about an hour and a half, but when it goes bad, it goes REALLY bad, and lasts about 40 minutes..or less.

Help!!!!!

 

[marketsons1985]

Bump, anyone?

 

[Idontcare]

Are you sure this is a case of bad batteries and not just a simple reflection of that sad state of expected battery operating lifetime?

Of the 4 laptops I have had in the past 2 years (all Dell's mind you) which I used a lot (24x7 type use) the batteries never survived more than 6-9 months in the sense that after that much time the battery life after full charge was approximately 40% of the original battery lifetime after a charge.

I just toss the battery, buy new and be on with it. If you are really going to rely on something then it should be worth the money to replace or repair it.

Oh, one other idea that popped into mind, could your AC/DC adapter be on the fritz? Overheating the Li batteries during recharge is supposed to be a killer on the battery lifetime I have heard (not fact, just rumor).

 

[marketsons1985]

Well I thought it might be that at first, but when the second battery died after only being used for 3 months (stopped holding a charge in February, got it in November), I got skeptical. They've tested my adapter, and they seem to think it's fine. It is something that I will be relying on, but unfortunately as a college student I don't have the funds to buy new batteries / laptops all the time.

I'm still covered by a warranty until a year from now, so I want to make sure that I catch any problems before then.

 

[Jiggz]

There is no holy grail on the standard life of a laptop battery due to difference in usage, even with identical unit of different user. Li-Ion battery do not require total drain to make sure it charges fully. But if you want to see how much charge the battery can supply with your typical usage you can try charging it fully and then do your normal system usage and time it. This will give you a ball park usage time but not necessarily accurate because it all depends on your usage. One thing that can extend battery life is to maximized on ram i.e. 1.5Gb to 2.0GB and then disable pagefile. This is assuming you are using Windows. This will reduce accesses to the hdd thus battery life.

 

[marketsons1985]

Is it a bad sign that in the first 3 full discharges, my times went from 1:30 to 1:25 to 1:20? Same usage in each case...

 

[marketsons1985]

Bump for the work crowd.

/me is skeptical of this computer and not confident in it working...

 

[pcgeek11]

The battery will die faster when it is discharged and charged more frequently. Those batteries have a limited number of charge discharge cycles.... I had a Dell I5100 notebook 2.66 desktop Pentium processor which most of the time was running from the power adapter. I know at the end of last year after three years of ownership and daily use the original battery would still hold for 2 hours working on documents and using the internet on a wireless connection. which is only marginally lower than when it was new.

If you HAVE to have a good battery and you are not confident in the one you have ... It looks like the choice is already made. Doesn't it?

pcgeek11

 

[Oyeve]

Could it be some controller on the board that tells the system, "hey, im fully charged, stop charging me", maybe is defective? I had an elcheapo portable DVD player that had its battery die in a few months because it was always plugged in and always in a charging state. Got a better one and when the battery is charged the charge light goes off. The old players charge light was always on.

 

[pcgeek11]

I'm fairly certain that circuitry that prevents over charging and over heating is contained in the battery pack.

pcgeek11