Question about the whole Battery Life thing....

Here's what I don't understand about battery life issues:

If I need to use a laptop for an entire day (say, 8 hours), there's essentially no way I could get around lugging an AC adapter with me, regardless of what notebook I buy.

So, what I don't understand is, why is there so much emphasis placed on battery life? It seems that most machines will last for somewhere in the range of 2-3 hours. So, how much would it help me to find a machine with a "long" battery life that could get me, say, 4-5 hours of life. I mean, either way it's not lasting you the whole day and you'd still have to bring an AC adapter with you, right?

What am I missing?

Thanks,

 

bus/train/plane rides when it doesn't mean jacksquat if you have an AC adapter with you or not.

 

i only spend about 5-6 hours in school as well- so don't need to bring the AC adapter either~ that's why I need the long battery life

 

Exactly my situation as well.

If someone is going to be plugged in all the time, battery life should not be a factor. The reason why it IS a factor for so many people is that a laptop is generally meant to be mobile and it wouldn't be fun to have to hunt for an outlet to plug into.

 

And it bares repeating what jegHegy said--- long plane trips. Watch a whole movie without the battery dieing, wait in a connecting airport, and watch another movie. All without plugging in. Lots of airports these days, finding an AC outlet is all but impossible.

 

I am in High School and Travel at least 15 times in a school year on bus trips. The average trip is over 4 hours. Having a computer the whole time, between movies, games, school work, music, or whatever else is really nice. My solution is 2 internal batteries, providing anywhere from 3-5 hours each (depends on what I am doing) and an external battery, which is about the size of a large mousepad. All in all, I can get about 15-18 hours battery life if I push it, but a minimum of 9 hours, so batteries can do everything you need.

 

Where'd you get the external battery?

 

I offer this as a warning from personal experience and it involves the use of a 12 cell battery on the DV1000 series.

I searched to get a 12 cell battery and found one being marketed with the part number NHP018 as being a replacement for the official HP PB995A.

As the HP store did not show the PB995A being available in my region (Australia) I purchased the NHP018 from a third party supplier.

The battery worked fine for one full cycle, charge discharge then it refused to charge beyond 95%.

The supplier replaced this battery with another one and the same thing occured, he replaced that with a third battery, this one when it reached 26% would fall immediately the 5%.

With the OEM battery in all cases the computer sees it as a JM-6 model and whilst maximum capacity is shown as 127872 mWh this was never reached with 2 of the OEM batteries and with the third this value dropped to around 10xxxx mWh after its first charg cycle.

Having told HP of my trouble they flew a PB995A from China for me at a price that was a $100.00 LESS than the OEM version.

The thing I have noticed is that the correct battery is seen as a model JM-12 not a JM-6.

I offer the above to those who are going to get the 12 cell battery - be carefull and make sure you can return if it does not work out.

 

So..you bought a generic battery, and it was crap. And you're suprised because? I would never trust a generic battery with something as expensive as my laptop. I've tried generic batteries for my cell phones, and I learned quite quickly that generics are no match for genuine OEM batteries. People have nothing to worry about buying batteries from HP.

By the way, OEM =/= aftermarket no matter how the vendor phrases it. OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer which would mean it's genuine HP - clearly your battery was not.

I'm glad you were able to get a genuine HP battery, and at a good price.

 

Then why do they make these generic batteries? I've seen a lot of 12 cell non-HP batteries being sold on Ebay, be careful, I keep getting tempted into buying them.

 

Thank you! I have been looking for exactly that information. I was thinking of getting the NHP018, but now I'll be more willing to shell out the extra cash for the HP battery.

 

because there are people out there who actually buy them.

 

Exactly. People who don't know any better buy it, then find out it's not nearly as good as OEM so they then have to buy another battery. The only loser here in the customer, which I'm sure the vendors of generic batteries could care less about unfortunately.