HEL80 Battery Problems.

Heya..
So my hel80 doesn't last for even an hour now..what gives..When i turn it on from leaving it to charge it is usually at 50ish %. Sometimes I can get it to 100% but then it says i have 45-35 minutes left..and it does in fact drain that quickly...do i need a new battery? I got it from powernotebooks, do you know their policy? I dunno if I qualify for repairs anymore, my hel80 has been kinda beat up...
Thanks
-James

 

Did you try letting it drain fully, then charging it fully for a few cycles?

 

Recent batteries don't have the known "memory" effect anymore, check your charging mode through your smart power console, which can do it at 50%, 75% and 100% to extend the life of the battery against duration while on battery only.

 

Heh heh..I'm stupid..
could you both tell me how to do that?
I get the drain fully thing..but what do you mean by a few cycles? you mean just keep doing that?

and then where is the smart power console..is that just the power options..?

lol thanks
-James

heres a pic of the gross battery life..

 

Don't worry, no body is stupid, we are all in a learning path. The smart power application is on the control panel.

 

lol...sorry i dont see it..

I have xp..maybe thats the prob?

 

I thought you had vista, anyway you need to look at your power schemes menu.

 

I have a one and half year old HEL80 which is suffering from the same problem. I seldom use Windows but normally Ubuntu Linux, which tells me that the capacity of the battery is now less than half of its original capacity. And in real life this means about 45 minutes of working time. Is this something to be expected of these batteries? Or should they actually last longer as one would expect? And the worst part is that it seems to be really hard to get an replacement for the battery, since the vendor I bought the laptop from has ceased to sell Compals. Could someone point me to a vendor who would have the replacement batteries and is willing to send them to Europe (Finland to be precise)?

Here is how the battery looks now:

$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/info
present: yes
design capacity: 7200 mAh
last full capacity: 1750 mAh
battery technology: rechargeable
design voltage: 11100 mV
design capacity warning: 175 mAh
design capacity low: 53 mAh
capacity granularity 1: 264 mAh
capacity granularity 2: 3780 mAh
model number: HEL8X000
serial number: 0154
battery type: Li-Ion
OEM info: Sony

There you see that the max capacity is actually only less than 25% of the original (1750 mAh vs 7200 mAh).

 

Mine is actually suffering the same thing. Its a little over a year old and a full charge only gets me about 1 1/2 hour of run time (compared with a 3 hour run time I was getting only about a month ago). Any idea why this is happening?

 

I think their warranty is for 3 years.

 

My HEL80 es about 1.5 years old. When new, the battery would last between 3.5 and "almost 4" hours, as advertised. Maybe 4 or 5 months ago it was down to about 3 hours and I thought that was expected (I don't run it on batteries often).
Then, suddenly around the turn of the year (can't say when it happened) I noticed a few times that when I unpugged the computer (after having been plugged for hours) the battery was immediately at 50%, and it said that about 1:30 was remaining...!! That happened several times and I was worried. After a full cycle now it charges to 100% but the new 100% still means about 1:30 hours.
What I'm saying is that somehow the aging of the battery is not linear. First it aged slowly and steady, and then it aged *a lot* at once. The only thing that changed was a few XP updates the days before but I don't think they should have anything to do. In any case, it's the same when running Linux

 

Not for the battery, I guess. I think its warranty is for one year only.

 

My HEL80 is about exactly a year old, heavily used plagged/unplugged over the time span. The battery life is at about 1:20.

As many people have already posted, the battery life has been declining rather quickly, because I am certain that the battery life was near 2 full hours up until just a month ago. So...is this supposed to be a natural thing?

I am considering bringing the battery to a battery recharging vendor (which seems pretty common where I am).

 

Hey.
At this point I just want a new battery.
I could order from powernotebooks but its like...250 for the 9cell. Does anyone know where i could get a replacement 9-cell for a bit cheaper? I would try ebay but I wasn't able to find matches for HEL8X000 model battery. i noticed the OEM is sony..
lemme know
-James

 

Just be careful with the specs, use the asme one recommended by the laptop manufacturer.

 

Xoticpc has them a little cheaper http://www.xoticpc.com/xotic-specific-accessories-force-3297-force-3298-compal-ifl90-jfl92-c-95_51_145_198_240_242.html

 

Most batteries are made in china anyway, so look fro the cheaper and the one meeting the spec.