VAIO Battery Wear

I have been using my TZ for about a week, which I purchased on eBay. I have now realized that the battery does not charge past 80%. I downloaded mobile meter and it shows that there is 0% battery wear. Is there a way to accurately determine how much battery wear this notebook has suffered? More importantly, is there a way to 'recondition' the battery to get the health back up?

 

if you got it used, he must have activated the vaio battery care function.
open vaio control center from all programs
and click battery care.

 

I installed XP from what it originally came with (vista). There is no option for battery care in vaio central. What does vaio battery care actually do?

 

or you can just charge your battery to around half and remove the battery while leaving the AC plugged. that way you wont have to charge and discharge it.

 

vaio battery care works on the principle that if you dont fully charge your battery all the time it will last longer.

the care has two options 80% or 50%.
50 for those who just keep their laptops plugged in all the time
80 for those who frequently use their laptop on battery (but of course they can afford not to have 20% of their charge).

For most notebooks pulling batteries in and out is bad wear and tear on contacts as well as the latches/levers for the battery locks/release.

If you've downloaded all the vaio available drivers and software for XP for your TZ you should have that option. you may need to contact CS for help.

 

I used the VAIO, XP downgrade discs to install XP. I am now in the process of installing Vista via portable one's no bloatware restore discs. I will see if this brings back that option.

 

okay, good luck. i was thinking about it and i would have thought the battery care function would be disabled if the comp was reformatted but perhaps this affects something deeper than just the software...like the bios or something like that.

 

I would suspect that the battery care function does change a setting in the BIOS or in the battery itself. The system needs to know how far to charge the battery, even if the computer is off. Ideally, there would be a facility within the BIOS setup to access this same function, but I don't recall seeing it on my G11.

On a related issue, I see that my G11's battery loses at least 10% charge per week when the computer is off. I tend to carry it around as a backup in case of a long power cut and, when i come to use it, I find that the remaining charge is somwhat less than I charged it to (normally 80%). This is annoying, although with more than 4 hours run time from a 50% charge, it is not devastating.

John

 

if re-installing the software doesnt help, i'd go into the bios and say restore to default. that may override it.

 

After reinstalling vista, it restored the battery health to full. Thanks all.