Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

Well in the last week my battery life has dropped from ~1.5-2hours worth or realtime usage, down to about 45mins, and seems to drop by 3-5mins every charge.

I have had my E6400 for less than a year and the 10 others that were all bought at the same time, thier batteries still last a good 1.5hours so have put in a request for my battery to be replaced under warranty, as the batteries only have a years worth of warranty.

I dont understand it really. I have not fully utterly discharged it. I have not let it sit on the dock on my desk all the time, I use it every 2 to 3 days off the dock and use the battery. I have not been using the "Express Charge" opion in BIOS as I dont really need it. I did everything I thought would prolong the life of this battery and it seems it was all for naught.

At least in BIOS it tells me the battery needs replacing, which is good because officially now it needs replacing according to Dell, lucky it is still under warranty. I wouldnt mind a 9 cell personally as 1.5-2hours is ok when I go to carry out some work away from my desk, but it would be nice to have longer and when I asked it seems the 9 cell is only AU$15-20 more than the 6 cell, but I am assuming that Dell will only replace my 6 cell with a 6 cell.

 

I think that variability in battery manufacture and usage does mean that some batteries last better than others.

What make is your battery and what is the current capacity? The battery info page of RMClock will give this info (the fully charged capacity means remaining capacity when fully charged).

You may find that you can recover some of the lost capacity by doing a full discharge so the 0% gets re-defined. However, it may be best to get Dell to replace it although I doubt they will give you a 9 cell. Only 2 hours of real life usage is quite low and you may want to look at tweaking your power management.

John

 

Easier to post a screenshot

 

hmmm just noticed that is with it plugged in, here it is running on bettery:

 

based on your screenshot:
you have a 57720 mwh capacity batt
and
your full charge capacity is ONLY 14652 mwh

that's the problem.... that's the reason for your 2-hr life

my 57720 mwh is a 6cell batt
has 55250 mwh charge capacity hence my 5hr life....

you have either a defective batt or worn out batt cells
might as well replace your batt

 

Yeah I am but a small cog in a big corporate machine, so I have put the request in, just got to wait. That said, they replaced my faulty fan in 3 days after I reported it. I must have gotten the one put together by the apprentice, as the other 10 we bought all at the same time have been bullitproof, not an issue with any of them.

EDIT: Is there any "trick" to fully discharge or just turn off the windows auto-shutdown at 3% battery and just run it till dead?

 

when at 3%...leave it at bios mode.....

 

Cheers, I'm off to fully discharge my battery, after that happens I'll post a screenshot right after rebooting and at fully charged.

 

Well it took a whole 11mins for the battery to die, that is with both cpu cores maxed out, the backlit keyboard on, the lcd turned to the brightest and no less than 4 videos going, 1 playing from a dvd in the dvd drive

EDIT: I did notice that after the battery died, the progress abr for the bios took about 45-50secs to go across

 

Plugged in is fine since, when charging is finished, the fully charged capacity is what you have available.

I disable the critical battery action and leave the computer to run on light usage.

Anyway, if you are down to 1/4 of the original capacity then a replacement is long overdue. It's a Sony, I see. My 6 cell is a Samsung and the 9 cell is a Panasonic.

John