My new laptop 9 cell battery lasts less than 2 hours?is this normal?

my inspiron 9400 arrived a few days ago, and after i fully charged the battery it only lasted for 1:45 with power saving profile then i fully charged it again and restarted the laptop enterd the bios to see how long would it last without windows loaded and it went out after 2 hours,is this normal,i mean WTF when orderd they said it should last between 4 till 5 hours.i used to play movies on my dead ASUS for 3 hours

 

Could you please provide us with your laptop's specs and what you were doing (ie. applications, wireless on, bluetooth on, etc.) so that we can get a better idea of what the issue is. Also if while you were in the BIOS run if the wireless cards were turned on as well.

 

sorry about that
specs:
Intel Core Duo 2060 1.6
1024 MB ram
Go 7900GS
80GB HDD 7200RPM
Wifi and BT were off in both Vista and the BIOS

 

What is the OS ? Is it Vista (*shivers*) ?
If the answer is positive, you can try a Live Linux Distro and see how much battery life it has.

 

but i already tried the battery without vista loaded i mean in the BIOS

 

Yeah, I am not positive, I have a 1210, but those numbers do seem low.

EDIT: Wow, just read the latest stuff, and maybe Vista does suck more power...but a lot of site's are on the fence. I may load my HD thats set to Dual boot and try some tests...

 

Hmm.... what are you trying to do with the computer when running it on battery? You said power saving so I'm assuming the nic card is off and the screen is atleast dimmed. I won't even ask about wifi on. Does the bios say the battery is okay? Perhaps you should check a program like mobilemeter to see if there is an unusual amount of wear. When you press the button on the battery to make the charge status lights come on, what do they do? Do they function normally? Also what does the battery indicator light on your hinge do? Any out of the ordinary there?

I wouldn't be surprised if Vista is messing it up though, as the above have said.

 

its weird because the battery didnt live much longer in the bios more than vista!
BTW can you guys recommend me good battery monitor that can work with Vista?
thanks

 

My computer runs about the same time with Vista, btw. Maybe I am the exception, but I run a Balanced profile, 5/7 brightness, and Aero and get about the same time I did with XP.

And I have never used a battery program, sorry. I am sure someone here has though.

 

ummmm Metamorphical did suggest a battery checker....lol

 

Hi,

I use XP Home on mine and my 9-cell battery lasts about 2:30 on office/internet use. So it might be normal that with vista, the run-time is below 2 hours. The 7900GS really needs a lot of power.

Tobi

 

I could get tree hours in vista brightness full, cpu undervolted, bt, wifi, usb, and everything else u can think of turned off. doing light tasks. one and half hr running superpi and prime95 with brightness full. So your battery life is way too short.

 

I use rmclock, u can check the discharge rate. Check is urs is abnormal.

 

The 1 hour and 45 minute timeframe is about what I get as well. I have it on always on profile though.

 

Dude! It's your Go 7900GS... My son has the 9300 with the high end video and it sucks electrons like a dead short. Try it highly underclocked, the video card that is... and you'll see what I mean. You don't need that horsepower using your word processor or browser. Just crank it up when you need it for gaming. I can't remember the software he uses to underclock his NVidia (7600... something) but it makes a huge difference in battery life. BTW, he gets about the same run time with his hi cap battery running the video balls out.

 

He werent lasting long even in bios, computer shouldnt be drawing that much power there.

 

My battery lasts about 80-90 minutes. During that time I was installing applications. I have the 6 cell battery.

 

Can someone remember that software for me? My batteries life goes down after 1 hour and half. Go7950GX user here.

 

was it a refurb Laptop? I think usually when you get a refurb, you keep the same battery also. So maybe that might be your problem??

 

Did you really expect 4 hours of battery life in a 17"?