Battery life-a big Con?????

Gidday guys

Just a thought I had today while charging my W3J battery. We all buy our new notebooks with the advertised "3 hour battery life" (or whatever) which we all take with a grain of salt anyway. In reality we use it and get a significantly less life. For instance my W3J gets about 2-1/2 hours if I discharge it completely while doing the normal thing, ie a bit of music, Word, etc.

However, all the learned people tell us not to discharge your battery below 40% or we will kill it quickly. So, as far as my reckoning goes, my 4800mAh battery is now only worth 2880mAh, and is now only good for (or at least should only be used for) 1-1/2 hours. (60% of the original 2-1/2). What's the story? Surely in 2007 we can manufacture a battery we can discharge completely, or at least get more grunt out of the Li-Ion cells. I know, I know, graphics cards suck the juice, but 40% basically unusable is a big whack from anyones battery.

Feel free to correct me if I am barking up the wrong tree, but what's everybody else's thoughts?

Regards to all.

 

If your battery is a year old then it could have lost 1/3rd of its capacity.

However, you may find that you can recover some or all of the missing capacity by draining the battery until the computer goes off.

Have a read of this thread about disappearing battery capacity..

John

 

How long have you had your laptop and that battery? You may want to consider getting the modular bay battery as well.

Use NHC and see what your wear percentage is, and see if your laptop will run past 0% charge, according to MysticGolem's article.

Other than just doing normal tasks, I have found playing music does decrease battery life up to 20 minutes, because it is constantly accessing the hard drive, so your battery life results are fine.

You should consider getting new battery, and monitor it's wear over time.

 

There is nothing wrong with discharging a Li-Ion battery past 40%, as long as you don't drain it to 0% and then store it long enough for the voltage to drop below where the charging circuit will recharge it.

You might have confused the advice that you should *store* a Li-Ion battery at 40% charge level... Which is to avoid the under-charged state.

 

Yep, you can discharge up to about 5% after which it's best to plug it in.

it might be that you are just affected by normal wear. The battery wear problem as suggested by MilestonePC -- I've never heard of a W3 being affected by it, so it's unlikely. If you've been using your battery daily and it's more than 6-9months old, then it's probably just normal wear.

If under warranty ( < 1 year) you can push to get your battery replaced. Optionally, also get a modular bay battery that should increase battery life.