Compaq Battery Life 1.5 hours! Are you kidding me?

Ok, Compaq Presario V2000 (V2205 i think) widescreen 14.1 brightview, 1.7 Pentium celeron. About 6 months old. 6 cell battery.

I'll Run down the battery, charge it overnight, and only get an hour and a half out of it. Thats unacceptable, but I'm worried my battery is fine, and that's the best I'm going to get. Tell me that's not right.

 

I'm afraid Celeron's don't get that great battery life, I'd expect around 2 hours for it.

 

The v2205 uses the Celeron M CPU. Celerons cannot slow the CPU to conserve the battery like a Pentium M. 1.5 hours does seem a little low. Did you try dimming the screen some? Also going into msconfig and turn off any unnecessary services that turn on when Windows boots. Good Luck.

 

There's no such thing as a 'Pentium Celeron' - that's like saying you drive a Toyota Hyundai

The Celeron-M lacks speed stepping but on a Gateway with a Celeron-M @ 1.4GHz I got 2.5 - 3 hrs. As suggested, try turning down the brightness as that will greatly improve battery life. It looks like you also have a Broadcom WiFi card which I don't beleive is as efficient as Intel's card.

 

I think it would be more like an Avalon Camry.

 

The celeron m's lack the power saving features of the Pentium M, so the battery life you are getting is just about right. You can try the bigger 12 cell battery which should double your battery life.

Nope not true. There have been many reviews which point out that laptops(Pentium M + intel chipset) with either card have the same battery life.

 

I support that. Even if we assume it is not as efficient as Intel, the power difference is too little to make to significant change in battery life(may be 5-10min in worst case scenario)

 

The 6-cell battery is a big reason why your battery life is suffering. Upgrading to the 12-cell will double it.

And, as others have posted, the Celeron M is not very good with power management.

Dim the screen to 50%, that always helps, and make sure the laptop is on "Portable/Laptop" mode.

 

Hello,

I'm new here having recently picked up a V2000 with the AMD 64 Turion, 1.6Ghz processor, and a 60 gig hard drive. I was also a little bothered by the battery time on the standard 6 cell battery. Using the computer without any changes to the screen or anything, I can get 2 hrs from the battery. I've talked to a number of students using Dell laptops who are getting at least 3 from their computers. I decided to buy the 12 cell battery, and the time is much improved. I've only used the 12 cell twice, but by dimming the screen I was able to get 5 hrs 40 minutes out of the battery. Without dimming the screen I got about 4hrs 50 mins if I remember correctly. This time is the total time the battery lasts without allowing the computer to hibernate. I'm pretty satisfied with the 12 cell battery although I wish it was a little smaller. I'm also happy with the Compaq overall. Nice little computer in my opinion. I upgraded from a Sony Vio that I purchased in 2002. The Sony feels more heavily built, but otherwise I prefer the Compaq. My Sony gave me continual fits and the battery time was awful (about 45 minutes when new). I later read the Sony only included a low powered battery with this model unless you upgraded. So far, no problems with the Compaq. I use it primarily for word processing, spread sheets and digital photography. The battery times listed above were while doing basic word processing and bouncing between a number of different files and programs.

 

I've actually heard that on older wireless cards at least, the non-Intel ones such as Atheros and Broadcom were more power efficient than their Intel counterparts.

The screen and optical drive are the biggest battery drainers, so try to dim the screen brightness and maybe rip your files from your cd/dvd to the hard drive.

 

I'll try the dimming the monitor, thanks guys.

 

How do you dim the screen on a v2000?

 

Press the "Fn" key along with "F7" to dim or "F8" to make brighter.

 

Yeah, I've actually found that my internal wireless in my zv6000 (b/g broadcom from HP) can carry signals and boost them, unlike Intel's Centrino technology. I've also found that the wireless solution in my notebook is more power efficent than its Intel counterparts.

 

Thanks for your help. This is a great source of laptop information.