Would an SSD help battery life?

[gmaster456]

I have an older (Late 2010) Toshiba laptop. It was pretty bottom of the barrel when I got it, and it's even worse now, but I would like to keep it usable for another year or so. The battery life was terrible when I got it, and it hasn't gotten any better. So I was wondering if an SSD would help with the battery life. Ever since I got it, I've been lucky to get an hour and 45 minutes of of regular usage on a full charge. And that's on power saver mode with power saver off it's more like an hour to an hour and a half with it off. I know it would be a significant performance boost over the 5400rpm drive in it. Would an SSD also help with heat? I think the fans spinning is having a significant impact on battery life as well. I have other, much faster machines, but I would like to keep this one up and running as long as possible.

Specs:
AMD Sempron SI-42 @ 2.1Ghz
2gb DDR2 RAM
ATI Radeon 3100 256mb
250gb 5400rpm Drive
Windows 7 Home Premium x32

 

[mrcmtl]

An SSD would not be significantly beneficial in your case. You will notice that everything will boot faster and that your laptop will be a bit quieter but that's about it. As far as I can tell, the difference in battery life between an SSD and a regular hard drive is negligible. And your fan is spinning due to the heat coming from the CPU and the chipset, not the hard drive. You might want to see if you can open the laptop from the bottom and do a quick dust off, I think that will help much more in your case than replacing your hard drive with an SSD.

 

[philipma1957]

http://www.toshiba-laptop-battery.com/


This may be cheaper and work better then an ssd in your case... Your case appears that the battery has gone far over it's rated cycles.


500 is about standard rating for recharge cycles. Once the battery is past rating. The recharge is always shorter. 2 vs 4 for example. I used google to find that link I am clueless to the decency of the company but it is a starting point to compare with the oem prices that toshiba direct will charge you.

 

[paperwastage]

a) find/get a new battery
b) you might feel the laptop less hot .... my M1330 Dell has the HDD just below the left aluminum palmwrist... with a 7200rpm, you can feel the heat (SMART says HDD was around 42C)... with an SSD, it's cool to touch

 

[razel]

As with others, a new battery is the correct solution. The next solution after the battery is lowering your screen brightness. An SSD would be the best upgrade. It will liven your laptop. Just don't spend too much on the battery and SSD that it's half the cost of a better, newer laptop.