How do you prolong battery life?

I am going crazy trying to understand why my battery life is so terrible.

I am not getting more than hour with my 6cell on my model. I have all the power consumption values for max life yet I am severely disappointed and thinking about returning my notebook to costco. I am not sure if I am doing something wrong or I may have a bum battery. I know with a 7400 video card it sap some juice but I have no ability to really go portable....

 

Hmm.. That's odd. Did you fully charge the battery before you turned on your computer? Also, you might need to recalibrate it by completely draining the battery (not even letting Windows shut itself down) then charge it again (without the PC on) and that might have an effect. Besides that, I guess you could take it back to Costco and say you got a bum battery.

 

If it is fairly new and you are only getting an hour, something is wrong. Perhaps you could download NHC to see what the wear level is your battery. Dimming the screen and running in low power mode will help with the battery life.

 

only an hour battery life in brand new notebook... strange i suggests you return it... it shouldn't be like that...

 

If you have vista and are running the aero glass mode, that's probably the culprit.

 

Thanx for hints... I am actually running Media XP and set the Nvidia card for Max power consumption when unplugged. It's quite odd for the battery to be dead in an hour so I wanted a little feedback before returning something.

 

I've installed NHC and now may have discovered the problem.

NHC says my battery wear is already 57%. I want to know how accurate/inaccurate this might be?

I Will happily take this baby straight back to Costco and take it from there but I just want to remedy the situation.

 

Bump..... Anyone have any words of wisdom

 

Take it back.

 

I agree, return it ASAP and get a nice new battery pack!

 

Yea I have tried every setting and adjustment with NHC and can't get a charge that lasts more than an hour and change. Part that bites is that I will be forced to switch to Vista if I want a new HP....BLAHHH!!

 

i have the dv9000 and i too only get about an hr battery life

 

i get about 1.5-2hr on my dv6113us running on vista w/ aero using power saver.

I do think there is something wrong with your 6cell battery so it's probably best for you to return the notebook or invest on a 12cell.

 

OK So I got the wild idea to call HP Support...


I'm not prejudice but can I speak in english not Indian?

That wasn't the best part. I wanted to ask about this battery-life dilemma as I remember being able to actually finish watching a DVD in full Performance w/o having it plugged in.. (This is supposed to be portable.) I did my research and according to everything I saw the 6-cell was shown having 2-3 hours of juice if you set your performance to save power. I checked many places and was getting the same info. Well according to HP CSR, I'm only supposed to get an hour..... BS. IF you actually want a notebook to sit on your desk and look pretty you get a big monstrosity. I want to have 2-3 hours of juice to be able to work on the go and now i feel like an idiot listening to some guy who can't speak good english tell me it's "good."

Alright so I neglected to mention that the csr guy did a remote control on my laptop. He did some registry stuff and was supposed to help clean up my startup and appy use. Well now I cannot automatically switch displays, must be done manually to and from external monitor. Second my scroller on the trackpad no longer works... Gee I wonder what else can go wrong in less that 12 hours of letting them touch this thing.... $1200 simoleans for this? I'm HOT!

I'm not sure what i want to do now. I like the aesthetics of my notebook and have grown attached but if I need to get something that isn't a power sapping HP I will. I'll be at Costco's door in in a skinny minute.

 

I get about 2 hours 35 minutes on my dv2122tu.

Core 2 Duo
Intel GMA 950
Screen brightness set to minimum
Webcam driver disabled

 

Try calling again and telling them you only have 15 minutes of battery.

Then see if they can say that's normal.

When my 1 year old Acer was down to 30 minutes of battery, they were ready to ship me a new battery without question, but I was 3 weeks out of warranty.

 

I downloaded that program and I think it says my battery degrade is at 34 percent and I've had it since mid January. Now I have a dv9000t but I was wondering if this was normal?

 

I think my best bet is to just TAKE IT BACK.


However where do i go from here... I am contemplating switching to the 2000t but at what premium? With a weaker gpu will i still be lucky to get 2 hours? that I don't need if I can get a stronger allaround system from ASUS that will actually offer more battery life and MORE power in the system for the same price....