dv9000t Short Battery Life?

Howdy Folks,

I'm hoping someone here knows what I'm doing wrong. I purchased a dv9000t in March because of it's battery life claims. Review after review said it would get 2 1/2 to 3 hours of battery life which for me is important.

For some reasons I only get 1 hour of battery life when I use the machine unplugged. I use the HP recommended settings which also includes a dim screen that I can hardly read.

As a test I even let it set yesterday unplugged and let it shut off the screen and go into sleep mode. After 90 mins I checked and it had 4% battery left. So, it only has 90 mins battery life when it is in sleep mode!

The worse part is that I actually paid for a long life battery with this thing. It's totally nuts!

Anyone have a suggestion on what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks.

 

well as long as you arent using the drives, the CPU and playing games then you should get over 1 hour. Mine has wireless on with mid brightness and it lasts about 2 hours. Also check if your CPU is running at full speed or half like it should when you're not doing anything. you might also want to download the HP battery check thing which will check how good your battery is. Try calibrating it, that's done by letting your battery drain completely to 0% and shut down then recharge.

If all that fails, ask for a replacement battery

 

battery run time will depend very much on how you use the laptop. If you're doing a lot of disk I/O, CPU intensive activities, using the optical drive a lot, or using anything with hardware 3D acceleration (games, CAD) your battery run time will be very short.

My dv9500t gets maybe 90 minutes (if I'm lucky) when running on battery and using it gently. It never leaves my home, so not really a problem for me. (I have the standard sized 6-cell). If battery run time is so important, why the heck did you chose a 17" notebook with dual hard drives?

My iBook G4 on the other hand, gets between 5.5 and 6 hours. Which is half the reason I bought it.

Also, this laptop is available with your choice of 4 different batteries. There was a 6-cell, high capacity 6-cell, 12 cell, etc. Obviously, whichever battery you chose will directly affect your run-time.

 

I just called HP and it ends up a had a bad battey. They are sending me a new one.

Thanks guys!

 

That's better business, as I have a STUNNING 2 hours 58 minutes on mine dv9500t not only sitting and watching but downloading-uploading, surfing, etc... And guess what? That is only regular battery!