HP has to have some of the worst batteries ever.

I don't know about you, but HP Batteries for me degrade EXTREMELY fast. My first battery went from 4 hours of life to 1 in under a year, as well as my second one. This is basically how it happened for me...

~ 4 hours with lowest screen setting for around first 3 months
~ 3:30 for around 4 months
~ 2:30 ~2 months
~ 2:00 for 2 months
~ 1:00 for the last few months

It's absolutely crazy. Under Ubuntu, my battery would last only around 10 minutes before giving me critical battery warnings.

Sorry, just had to vent.

 

I've never had luck with any laptop batteries at all. My Thinkpad's battery was down to 5 minutes runtime on a "full" charge after 2 years, 20 minutes for my 18-month old Compaq 6-cell, and finally 40 minutes for my HP 6-cell that is 11 months old. As I said, no luck at all.

 

How well do you treat your batteries? I lost about 30 mins on my X1000 over the course of 4.5 years (started at 3 hours went down to 2:30-2:40ish). Right now I've had my 8510p for almost a year and haven't had any drop in battery life (still get 3-4 hours pending on what I'm doing). Now the little adapter unit, yeah, those are junk. I went through 3-4 of them on my X1000.

 

I treat them like any normal person. I drain em till they get pretty low, charge em up. Full drain every now and then to keep it calibrated.

I mean I didn't take super meticulous care of it, but it's not like I ran it over with a car either. Aren't the batteries supposed to drain to around 75% original capacity in 3 years? Because mine went down to 25% in less than one.

 

I don't treat my batteries that well either. I keep my laptop plugged in most the time with the battery in and then fully discharge maybe once a month. Though in the morning I'm too lazy to plug in my current laptop so it gets to around 30% before I stop being lazy.

 

I've been doing it this way for years, which now makes me wonder if that is part of the problem. My uncle uses alot of battery-powered tools in his business, and told me that batteries which remain unused for long periods of time are generally the first ones to rapidly deplete.....

 

Not discharging your battery and keeping your laptop plugged in with the battery are two of the worst things you can do battery life wise. Still, haven't noticed much of a decrease. As long as the AC adapter works throughout the lifespan of my laptop, I'll be happy.

 

That used to be the case with older battery technologies jin07, but not anymore with LiPoly.

With a new battery it's best to fully charge it for 24 hours, then run it all the way down. Then repeat once more. No more conditioning is needed, and in fact every discharge cycle subtracts from the life as these batteries are rated in charge/discharge cycles.

Leave it plugged in and it will last longest.

 

Interesting, since HP recommends the opposite. They recommend callibration once a month.

 

i also have an hp compaq 8510p about a month old. just want to know how did you keep your battery in good condition?

 

Reference?

 

The thing is, I'm not really doing anything to keep in it this condition. Like I said before, right when I wake up, it's usually unplugged simply out of laziness. After awhile I plug it in and it stays plugged in until I go to bed.

 

I agree that HP has some crappy batteries. Almost all my classmates at my school I've talked to have batteries that are 100% dead. They said I was lucky that I could still get 20-30 minutes out of mine after a year and a half (me and all my sophomore classmates have the same laptop BTW). There's a few i talk to that still get 1.5-2 hrs, but that's because they've almost never used their batteries (except to perhaps calibrate them once a month).

I think part of the problem, at least with the business notebooks, is HP's "fast charge" technology, which charges the first 90% in 90 minutes (it takes an additional 60-90 minutes for the final 10%). While this is certainly convenient, I've heard that rapid recharging is also very hard on the battery cells compared to slow recharging. This is probably why you see batteries last longer with other manufacturers' notebooks: they don't recharge their batteries as fast.

 

I had problems with 2 batteries from HP with my zx5000. Once it was covered under the warranty and the other time it wasn't.

So I purchased a new battery from them then switched the serial numbers and returned the bad one back to HP as the new one and I got my money refunded. So basically that was covered under my personal warranty hehehe

 

who said HP makes the batteries? lol

they just put their sticker on it, they dont actually manufacture it.

heres HP's battery guide:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...=au&lang=en&rule=36375&product=3645814&dlc=en

 

. . . . . .

 

Its actually Li-Ion chemistry for notebooks but yes its pretty much the same as LiPo.

What do you mean it will cut off at 50%? Are you saying it will cut off when theres only 50% left?

That quote is correct. Your battery will self-discharge day by day regardless of state. Thats why they recommend at leave at least 40% left for storage to prevent cell reversal.

 

. . . . . . .

 

Yes, its LI-Ion, it says it right on the battery. It would be much better if they were Li-Poly.

but, I definitely agree that HP doesn't have great batteries. My original 6 cell is useless now (laptop is 1 yr 8 months old) and the battery has maybe 15 minutes of life. The 12 cell that I bought in January is also showing wear, identical to the OP; little over 4 months old and down to 3:30 - 3:45 range.

 

I think you are misinformed. Notebooks these days use Li-Ion batterys. Google it, check ebay batterys if you want but i can guarantee you its mostly Li-Ion.They use Li-Ion because its more efficient by volume and weight compared to LiPo.

Im well aware of batterys as i was a hardcore hobbist and worked closely with LiPo, NiMH and NiCAD chemisty batterys. I personally have LiPo advanced charger and charged/discharged individual LiPo cells countless times. LiPo needs to be discharged at a certain voltage (not percentage) to avoid cell reversal. Can you give me reference to this 50% discharge mumbo jumbo?

 

No. I do not provide information to those with a negative attitude.

 

I was under the impression that Li-Poly was more efficient by Volume/ weight than Li-Ion.
Are HP's high-capacity batteries Li-Ion or Li-Poly, just curious.

The only thing that redeems HP's batteries as "the worst batteries ever" is that they don't explode.

 

They actually had a recall on them a few years ago. Brother had a V2000z but didn't have an affected battery.

 

Sony and dell recalled like 30million batterys in the past 3 years. HP hasnt had any major battery recalls

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2006/06/21/dell-laptop-explodes-at-japanese-conference

Lithium/alkaline based fires are very very dangerous. The whole laptop will set on fire and/or explode and water wont put it out

 

I think you guys are talking about different things
He was just referring to the minimum before the protection circuit kicks in. Its something the charge circuit deals with to prevent you from killing the battery. I think it also prevents the overcharging. In terms of the cells themselves.

However on the computer, we can drain it to 0% as much as we want. That limit is taken care of internally and is transparent to the users. Its like the minimum voltage the cells must retain in order for them to be rechargeable with normal means.

Theres this site http://www.batteryuniversity.com/index.htm which has a lot of information but as all content on the internet must be taken with a grain of salt although I agree with most of the stuff.

Back to the topic about draining to 0% its just supposed to be hard on the batteries to do full cycles and the cells handle regular top ups far better than draining below 20% or something then charging back up. The only reason HP or any of those companies recommend draining the batteries is only for the purpose of calibrating the battery so it may reflect the correct capacity of its cells.
I think a lot of people are still treating the lithium ion batteries like NIMH batteries, drain them down to zero (again its zero reported by the battery but internally the battery still has voltage) then charge them back up with the idea that doing that will prevent the memory effect.

BTW, the battery itself says Li-ion on the label so it uses lithium ion not polymer. Although I thought the only real advantage is lipoly was more stable in terms of less likely to burst into flames.

 

Exactly awdark, except that he and I are not talking about different things...

The Impudent Dude just does not believe me, because he has never heard of the protection circuit before. And I am not going to bicker. It is a fact.

 

Im aware of the protection circuit. Its also stops overcharging aswell

50% discharge?! where did you get that from? id like to see some sources for that.

 

Yeah, just a tiny one.

I really hope they find a higher quality manufacturer for the batteries. The laptops themselves are great. I'm surprised how well mine is running after 2 years of owning it.

That being said, I'm not sure who makes my battery. I've searched all over the casing. Guess it's a secret? I would imagine they'd have multiple manufacturers, as with LCDs.