Laptop battery life dying.

I have a Toshiba laptop.
It's nearly one year old.
The battery seems to be dying.
To start with and even recently... I had no complaints.
It's supposed to have 3 hours+ lifetime.
Right now... a fully charged battery will only last 60 minutes. : (
Am I doing something wrong or is this common?

Thanks.


OM

OM wrote:

I have a Toshiba laptop.
It's nearly one year old.
The battery seems to be dying.
To start with and even recently... I had no complaints.
It's supposed to have 3 hours+ lifetime.
Right now... a fully charged battery will only last 60 minutes. : (
Am I doing something wrong or is this common?

That is what is commonly seen with laptop batterys.

OM wrote:

I have a Toshiba laptop.
It's nearly one year old.
The battery seems to be dying.
To start with and even recently... I had no complaints.
It's supposed to have 3 hours+ lifetime.
Right now... a fully charged battery will only last 60 minutes. : (
Am I doing something wrong or is this common?

Thanks.


OM


Lifetime? By definition, a battery's lifetime is determined by
the number of times it is discharged/recharged or approximately
1 year, whichever limit is reached first.

Lifetime? By definition, a battery's lifetime is determined by
the number of times it is discharged/recharged or approximately
1 year, whichever limit is reached first.
wot...?
u mean come what may: one year later i've got a dud battery come what
may?
: (

is it worth me getting a generic battery (not sure if these are
available)...
or should i just spend a few quid and get the original?

OM wrote

Lifetime? By definition, a battery's lifetime is determined by
the number of times it is discharged/recharged or approximately
1 year, whichever limit is reached first.

wot...?
u mean come what may: one year later
i've got a dud battery come what may?
: (

is it worth me getting a generic battery
(not sure if these are available)...

They usually are for the more common laptops.

or should i just spend a few quid and get the original?

Only you can really say. They can be half the price of the Toshiba branded ones.

On 23 Jan 2007 10:59:23 -0800, "OM" wrote:

I have a Toshiba laptop.
It's nearly one year old.
The battery seems to be dying.
To start with and even recently... I had no complaints.
It's supposed to have 3 hours+ lifetime.
Right now... a fully charged battery will only last 60 minutes. : (
Am I doing something wrong or is this common?

Thanks.


OM

Yes, it's fairly common, and whether you did something wrong is open
to debate.

It's possible to extend the useful life of a laptop battery if you
follow the proper care procedures:

1. Don't recharge a battery until it's drained. Yes, I know fully
draining a NiMH or Li-Ion battery is extremely bad, but the hardware
on a modern laptop and built into most modern batteries makes it
impossible to drain a modern laptop battery to zero.

2. Don't run a computer on mains (aka. hydro, house current, plug, AC)
with the battery in place. The reasons are two fold. First, running
it on mains causes most laptops to apply a trickle current to "top up"
the battery. In the short term, it's convenient, as it gives you a
bit more juice so you can use the machine on battery a bit longer
later if you need to. However, as you're charging a battery that's
probably not drained, doing this repeatedly will reduce the life span
of the battery. The added heat of the charging circuit and the rest
of the laptop isn't doing the battery any favours either. The
recommended course of action is to pull out the battery before you
plug in to run the laptop off AC.

Of course, nobody bothers doing this, as it's rather inconvenient and
you buy a laptop for the convenience. The same goes for a cell phone
and its battery. If you do that, it's usually possible to still have
2/3 or more of original battery capacity even 2-3 years later,
sometimes longer.

If you use (and abuse) it like most people do, the charge capacity on
a laptop battery will drop considerably within a year or two, which is
where you are. At that point, you will likely have to replace the
battery or have it rebuilt at a specialty battery shop. Figure
$50-$200 depending on the model, and whether you have it rebuilt or
replaced.

There is one other thing you can try before swearing and marching to
place your battery order though. While NiMH and Li-Ion batteries do
not have memory problems like the older NiCad batteries, I've been
told that doing repeated partial charges can confuse the charging
circuitry in some NiMH and Li-Ion laptop batteries. Doing a full
discharge (ok, for the nitpickers, not a FULL discharge, but as close
as the circuitry will allow) and full charge, and then repeating this
a few times (few being 3-5 times), will sometimes fix it. Assuming of
course, that the problem was this particular glitch.

Keep in mind that no matter what you do, the charge capacity of a
battery will drop steadily and eventually will drop to below a useful
level. There's not much you can do about it. Laptop batteries don't
last forever. It's kind of why you see a lot of perfectly good,
older laptops being used sans batteries. The battery's died of old
age, and either the laptop's too old to get a replacement battery, or
the replacement's too expensive for the owner (some have fairly
expensive generics available, but as I mentioned, some of them run
into the hundreds of dollars).
--------------------------------------------------
Thanks,
MCheu

On 23 Jan 2007 10:59:23 -0800, "OM"
wrote:

I have a Toshiba laptop.
It's nearly one year old.
The battery seems to be dying.
To start with and even recently... I had no complaints.
It's supposed to have 3 hours+ lifetime.
Right now... a fully charged battery will only last 60 minutes. : (
Am I doing something wrong or is this common?


A battery starts degrading from the moment it is made, while
sitting on a shelf, while sitting in the laptop, just the
passive of time.

It then degrades even more from use, even more from misuse,
but mainly I think you are comparing apples and oranges.

When a laptop is rated for battery life it is typically done
in a best case scenario, practically everything set to a
very energy conservative mode. It might not even include
certain upgrades to a laptop that aren't available on all
models. Point is, if your use isnt' running it in the
lowest power mode you may be consuming a lot more power than
the consumption rate used to generate the 3 hour estimate,
and would not see 3 hours even with a perfect brand new
battery. Add to this that your battery is no longer brand
new and 1 hour is possibly a bit on the low side (depending
on what settings you're using and what exactly you are doing
with the system) but not beyond expectations.