battery drain

Hi! I have a Sony Vaio laptop (from 2009 but still running strong) and I bought it with an extended life battery. I would get 6-8 hours life with this battery, compared with 2 hours for a regular battery. Recently I noticed my battery is draining and fully charged I can get maybe 3 hours. Do these batteries go bad after a couple years? Or do you think it is something else, like with Windows 7?

 

Li-Ion batteries have a finite amount of charge cycles, if you used it quite often, the battery might just have gone through it's normal lifespan. Two years, seem a little short to kill a battery, but it s still in the realm of possible. Your battery might just need to be calibrated again on the other hand. Disable all hibernate/shutdown on critical battery and let it drain completely until the computer shuts off from lack of battery. Plug the charger, turn on the laptop and wait until the battery is fully charged.

 

That sounds about right.

Lithium Ion batteries experience wear over time as you use it, and keep cycling it between 0% and 100%. You get about 300 full dis/charge cycles with lithium ion battery technology. It is not uncommon at all for you to only get half of the battery life you used to get with a battery that is 2+ years old.

There is nothing you can do about this. This is a result of the chemistry inside of the battery itself. The only thing that you can do is to buy a new, unused lithium ion battery (or just learn to live with the diminished battery life until you buy a new laptop)

 

What you're describing is a normal for Li-on batteries. they die after 1-3 years depending on their vendor. If your battery lasted that long from 2009 till today it did a good job.

Anyhow, sounds like you need buy a new battery. if you want it to last that long you need to purchase the high capacity ones..

 

While you're at it, get two (at least). In pairs, is how your should buy all batteries for electronics.