Battery contest -- who will win???

After buying my 5672 in February, less than 1 year ago, I am down to 47% wear level and about 45 minutes of battery time. It seems to be wearing out faster by the day.

I will probably only have 0 minutes of battery in a few months. Anyone else enjoying such wonderful battery wear or am I the only lucky one.

 

Wow thats amazing o.o My notebooks almost a year old and im at 1% battery wear though I think its more like about 5%.

 

One big problem with notebook batteries is that when lithium ion replaced nickel metal hydride, the conditions under which they are used in notebooks stayed the same, but the conditions were good for NiMH and not good for Li-ion (charged fully, kept at 100% with a sort of trickle charge when not being used, and then run almost all the way down and fully charged up again.)

These were good conditions for NiMH, but they don't suit Li-ion and nothing about notebooks changed to accomodate this.

Li-ion likes frequent shallow charges before it gets very low, rather than less frequent deep charges. It doesn't need to be exercised as it doesn't have a memory effect.

It also lasts much longer if it is stored at a 40% charge level when not being used and if you don't use the battery much (and I don't) this is impossible to do without taking it out of the notebook. Being stored at 100% charge considerably reduces the lifespan. In the notebook on AC there's no choice.

Keeping the battery constantly charged up made sense with NiMH because they have a higher self-discharge rate when they're just sitting around. Li-ion has a much slower rate. Age you can do nothing about; Li-ion loses capacity over time, outside of other factors, but you should get 2-3 years out of them if they are fresh.

It's not that the batteries are crappy; they're just being used in a way that doesn't maximize their potential. Obviously some are worse than others.

I am going by memory from some googling I did a while back so if I have gotten any of this wrong please correct it.

 

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Mine only powers for 20 minutes after charging, I am attempting to get my message out to the public as well as the CEO of Compaq, this is my experience.

This message is directed toward CEO Ron Fortune, I called tonight looking to participate in the mobile battery replacement program to replace my broken and therefore defective battery. During the first call I went through "John" the tier 1 agent who said that there was nothing he could do for me, I asked that he please transfer me to a tier 2 agent since I didn't believe this to be correct, I was very kind in my approach.
"Amy" then took over after about 10 mins on hold which was never mentioned. Amy said that she did not have any informaton about what I was mentioning even though I offered to direct her, she said she needed to transfer me again, I asked her to please make sure I reached the correct department.
I then spoke with "Bryce" who seemed very frustrated that I wanted him to please pull the information that I was viewing from the compact website, I was disconnected on after about 3 minutes.
I called back determined to get this rectified, I spoke with "John #2" He said that we have never spoke before dispite the fact that this sounded like the same person as before, I asked that he please transfer me to tier 2 in hopes that I could get this finished
I spoke with the last agent who disconnected on me right after I started explaining my situation. I feel this service is extremely uncalled for especially since I purchased this thousand dollar computer because I only heard good things about your company, now it appears that I purchased junk since my battery will only stay on for about 20 minutes before being completely dead. I plan on sharing this email with all major customer service forums, friends, family, and business associates if this is not rectified.
So this is my last attempt at getting this issue resolved, I hope this gets escalated so that I am not ignored further since I feel that I do qualify for this battery replacement that your web-site mentions. Please feel free to email me back at [email protected] thank you for your time and I hope this is the final correspondence in resolving my battery issues.