Huh? HGL30 Battery screwed already?

I have an HGL30 that I bought about 2 years ago. From what I've read, batteries should last about 300 or 400 charge cycles, but I haven't even come close to using the battery that much since I keep it plugged most of the time. I may have done a charge cycle perhaps a total of 30 or 40 times tops, but right now the battery barely lasts 1 hour, using productivity software at min brightness with Powermizer on and wi-fi off, when it used to be 3 hours.

I'm really not sure if this is due to some system setting that maximises performance or something, since I don't know how to control the performance aside from the GPU, or if it is due to "natural" battery life decay. Is this what I should be expecting or may there be some sort of other factor involved? Thanks a lot in advance.

 

The battery's decay may have been expedited by leaving the laptop plugged in with the battery installed and never cycling the battery that often. My sister's MBP battery on her 1 year old notebook has ~400 cycles already and it still seems to run as well as it did out of the box. My dad's 3 year old HP battery was never used a lot and now the machine only gets 30 minutes or less of battery life.

-J.B.

 

That'd be my guess as well. Increased heat and the nature of Lithium Ion batteries not lasting as long when they constantly stay at 100% charge are usually the biggest negatives of leaving it plugged in. Here is a good thread on the subject: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=135938&page=2

Also, if you're curious to see how much it has decayed, you might try a utility like MobileMeter, which can tell you the battery's manufactured and current capacities. It only works in XP, though.

 

Ah, right, makes sense now since I also OC and this thing is pretty hot most of the time. Should I, in the future, remove the battery for this kind of use of would that not help either? Thanks for clearing this out BTW.

 

If you're just using the laptop sitting at a desk or for extended periods doing something that makes it very, very hot like 3D gaming or design, then I'd consider draining the battery to about 40-70% and then putting it in your freezer till you're ready to use it again. That should extend its life considerably. These batteries degrade regardless of where you put them, but you can slow down the process by giving the battery a break and keeping it cool.