Laptop Battery life 1.5 hours???

Hi all, i'm new here and i hope you guys don't go too rough on me! anyway, i just got a pcg-k23 laptop (2nd hand obviously) with a PENTIUM 4 2.8 GHZ processor i like everything about this computer except the horrendous battery life. I've got the stock one right now, and i'm wondering is there anything I can do to get a bit more life from the battery? Here's some ideas i have, plausible? i'm not sure, but here they are nonetheless :

1) undervolt (how do i do this?)
2) change to a pentium m processor (is this even possible?) :centrino:

oh and here's the somewhat realistic option

3) change the battery (how many cells is the stocker and how/where can i get another higher capacity battery, seen 4400 MAH ones, but nothing beyond. Is there other ones that have a higher capacity?)

Thanks in advance and thanks for helping out a newb, karma +1 for y'all!

Regards,
BDV

 

maybe it's already a bad battery since you got it 2nd hand.

 

You can get up to a 7200 MAH capacity battery. Even with that, you will not get very good battery life. Pentium 4 processors eat up alot of battery life and even the largest battery will not get good scores. You cant just simply change the pentium 4 with a centrino processor.

 

Thanks guys for the heads up.
Jtom, i was wondering where i'd be able to pick up a 7200 MAH battery? model number? and if possibly you know how much they cost?

Much thanks guys! keep the comments coming!

 

Well you can get them at alot of places. You can type in your model in a search engine. You can either go for a sony battery or a generic battery. Official sony batteries are incredibly expensive, around 300. A generic battery you can get for like 120-150. Im not that familiar with generic batteries but I am assuming they will be fine.

http://www.atbatt.com/product/ItemID/5316.asp
http://www.kahlon.com/itemdetailpg.asp?itemid=999444
http://store.l-f-l.com/cgi-bin/cp-app.cgi?pg=prod&ref=PCGA-BP2NY
http://www.laptopbatteries.com/laptop-batteries/sony_vaio_pcg-k23_(pcg-9rfl)/00067285.asp

These links are the 4000 MAH batteries. I was unable to find 7200 MAH batteries for your particular model. Thats not to say there arent any.

 

how expensive ! many sellers on ebay offer 4000mah battery with full one warranty, you can get one at a low price

 

Pentium 4 is the worst CPU for battery life. Two hours is the most you'll get.

 

Yep, and thats only if you're lucky with the computer doing nothing but playing music for example.

 

I don't think options 1) and 2) are possible since the Pentium 4 does not support speedstep technology (which allows the computer to dictate clock freq. based on load) and the Pentium M uses a different chipset.

My suggestion is to turn the screen brightness down and try to only use wireless LAN when you need it. Or, buy a spare battery.

 

I bought a 4000MaH Lion battery and it's great, from power_america on that big auction website. $69 with shipping, got it in 5 days.
I have a 4 yr old PCG-FXA36 with an AMD 4 1.0 ghz proc, and I get over 3 hours with it, and it has not been below 25% charge at 3 hours, I've never drained it totally to see how long I really have.
One thing I can suggest, though, is possibly look into getting a spare charger/PS, if yours is that old, if it dies, you will need a spare or you are d-e-a-d without one.