laptops battery only lasts 20mins HELP!!!

ok so i have noticed my battery life going down slowly since i purchased it just over 1 year ago. the origional battery life was between 3-2.5hrs and after switching to windows 7 i noticed a slight bit more life but then i installed battery bar and its now down to 20mins and droping... what can i do? is the battery just screwed? is i fixable? i would say that it is pluged in most of the time and i dont take the battery out even if its plugged in for days straight. i normally unplug it when the laptop gets turned of(or hibernate)

anyway any help whatsoever would be hugely appreciated.

thanks
mtarm1

 

I have read that it is possible that your battery life needs to be re-calibrated. You would change the power settings in your laptop so it does not automatically shutdown or sleep when the battery gets low, then let the machine run until the battery goes completely dead. Then set your settings back to the way they were and your machine will let you get the maximum battery life. You can probably google it and find the exact procedure. Basically your computer reads the voltage of the battery and at some point it thinks the battery is almost dead and it shuts off the machine, but the OS may not be in sync with the battery and there may be additional battery capacity left when the OS thinks the battery is about dead.

Of course it is possible that your battery is bad in which case you would need to buy a new one. Of the 3 laptops bought by members of my family in recent years, one of the 3 lost its battery within about a year.

 

was it an acer by any chance? thanks for the info btw...

 

over 1 year for an acer battery! i am jealous. my battery was down to about 10mins after 8 months. i have a new one now and keep the old one in all the time on ac (most use is plugged in anyway). only use the new one when i have to.

 

hmmm I have some acers that have good batteries after 2.5 years
worst I ever had was an aspire 3050 that crapped out after 10 mos

 

so is it more common in acers? i probs wouldnt get an acer now anyway (even before the battery dieing) will probs get an acer late this year... (if i have the money) do they have good battery's?

 

My Zepto battery lasted a year or so... Now I've had an Acer for about 3 weeks, so can't comment on battery wear, but hope it'll last 2 years. I've heard some bad things about Asus batteries, but not Acer?

 

Batteries are Asus' problem on low-mid end models. It's been like this for 2-3 years =/.
But it is not unusual for batteries to die after a year.

 

make sure you discharge and recharge your battery occasionally and try to keep your battery from heating too much while charging ... lont leave it on a bed or something.

as for who has the worst batteries ... they are preyyt much all the same but there are a few duds ... I find most of my duds in Sony's and HP. only had 1 or 2 bad ones in Acer and only a couple in ASUS as well

 

Try uninstalling battery bar. Also, acer doesn't make laptop batteries so buying a different brand of laptop doesn't mean you'll get different batteries.
My acer aspire one had well over 400 charge cycles over the course of 1.2 years, i use battery every day from 100% until couple minutes after 0%, the battery wear is only 15%.

 

it was roughly the same before i installed battery bar but i just never timed it... this is my first laptop so i have never had any other brands to go of... i beleive the battery is made by sony...

battery wear is 55.6%


sorry for the noob question, but what settings do i need to turn of to let it fully drain the battery?

 

You have to adjust the critical battery level to 0%.

 

thanks, done that, i shall let it run out when i finnish using it today.

 

atm battery bar is saying total life is 41 mins and i have 1% battery left... i think its been off battery for a little longer than that though... looking much better than before thanks for all your help guys.

 

You tried recalibrating? That should fix the non-synchronization between % left and time left