Laptop's battery life
 

HP Pavilion Entertainment PC

The laptop is two years old. Yesterday when all its battery was drained, I plugged in the power cable but even after one hour I didn't find the battery to be fully charged, in fact the icon was still red and then when light went off, the laptop hibernated saying "Low battery"??

In the morning I found the battery to be fully charged as I didn't remove the power cable in the night.

I think it is clear that the battery is damaged now??

I rarely used to run my laptop on battery as I heard somewhere that running the lappy on battery for long durations ruins the battery life! Is that correct or is that the reason of the damaged batteries?

Any way by which I can prolong the life of the new battery that I'll be purchasing?

meh...

my laptop used to take 3 hours to charge.. now the battery is so used it doesn't even charge anymore..

don't expect it to be fully charged in one hour.. heck, even the a video camera or a mp3 player takes more than that to fully charge..

if the battery charged fine the next day then it's ok that it charged. i don't think there's a way to prolong it's battery life...

i knew it was bad to not use the battery at all.. i guess i have to do my homework...

Maybe it just didnt charge when you plugged in the power cable. Is the power cable and plugs making good contact and not disconnecting intermittently ?

Otherwise the battery is dead

I had ressurected a Li-Ion battery once. We had an old HP ipaq bought like 6 years ago, which was used briefly and then forgotten. I found it like 1 year ago with dead battery that won't charge (remains as "no battery" after being plugged in for a day). It measured less than 1 V between + and -. I opened the battery case and connected it with another Li-Ion battery with 2 wires (like jump starting a car), left it like that for a day, and put it in the ipaq and plugged in. It detected the battery but it still was seen as empty and remained like that. After being left plugged in for a few hours it began to rise and got to full charge. The battery works great after a year of use since then

Thanks for responding, well, when I connected the power cable to the laptop slot, the slot emitted blue light, I think it is an indicator that the connection has been established??

and when I left the laptop OFF connected with the power cable throughout the night, it showed full charge in the morning and then I disconnected the cable and within around 20 minutes, again the indicator of "low battery" showed up!!!

I wonder if all this happened because I didn't use the battery much?

Hi Anisha,

My experience is that battery performance decreases over time and after a while there seems to be a tipping point (long charge, much shorter battery life).

Although I'm not sure why it happens; I've seen this behaviour before, and not just on laptops..... Some manuals tell you to, every so often, drain the battery completely before recharging it (been there, done that: doesn't seem to help).

The weird thing is that it isn't brand specific. At work we all use the same laptop brand and type and some start having battery problems after a short while, others never have problems (up till now, these laptops are a little over one year old). Sort of a known problem (the tech people just replace the battery when this happens).

Probably not what you wanted to read, but your are definitely not the only one having this issue.

If the cable connection is bad, you'll usually see the blue light flicker, get random "plugged" / "unplugged" messages from the os / notice the plug getting warm / etc. If none of those happens, its more likely the battery itself

The battery does not like to be empty for long time or repeatedly and does not like being for long time in high temp. Being allways full without use is not too good either but i dont think it can damage the battery as much as yours is

Water getting inside (more than some rain drops on the outside) or repeated condensation (as when moving the battery between warm and cold) can damage it

Thanks for replying, Druuna.

There must be an average life span of a laptop battery? I want to know what's that?

Sweet statement :)

There is a life span for every battery, and I don't have any issues accepting my battery is dead, what concerns me is the question whether it died before its average life span?

No such problems with me :-/

How can the battery be empty if you have to use the lappy, either it is charged or you are on AC and it is getting charged?

I seldom tried to use my battery for the fear of ruining its life :-/

Hi,
There should be an average life-span, but I'm not aware of a rule of thumb.

I have 2 laptops (not counting the one from work). I was warned that the battery on one (Apple) was expected to fail after about a year, I'm using it for almost 3 years now and don't have any problems. The other one (Asus) became problematic after about 6 months. Same is true for my camera's (Nikon): One drains within a few hours(!!), even if I don't use it (happened after about 9 months), the other one is almost 2 years old and no problems whatsoever.

I'm not sure what the lifetime is that was taken into account when these devices where build, but _I_ do expect them to last at least a few years.

You could ask the manufacturer what can be expected. Also check if your warranty still covers this.

Warranty was for ONE year, AFAIR, but I'll confirm the average life span from my vendor! Thanks.

Use it, get the battery empty, power off, wait a day before plugging back in. Each time you do something like that you destroy the battery a bit

If you want to use the computer plugged in for a long time, discharge the battery a bit and take it out of the computer

If you want to keep the battery charged well to be ready at hand, discharge to something like 0.8 - 0.9 full

If you want to store it for long time without use, discharge it to something like 0.5 full

A battery continues to discharge with time, so ~ once in month plug it in to restore it to 0.8 or 0.5 as needed

And yet i dont think that keeping it plugged in all the time can destroy it that much. It can degrade it a bit but not down to 20 min

Li-ion batteries degrade over time, whether you use them or not. the worst environment for them to be in, is at 100% charge, and warm. Guess what condition it's in when your laptop is plugged in on the desk?

If you never take your laptop off the desk, keep the battery out of it at approximately 70% charge. 40% is better, but if you need to pick it up and go out, you won't have time to charge it. If you use your laptop all the time on battery, try keep it between 30% and 80% charge. Anything lower/higher than that, and you initiate irreversible chemical reactions in the cells.

For older battery, you can charge your battery to 100% and then let it discharge completely. Do this 4 to 5 times in succession. This is known as conditioning and known to revive older batteries. Just do not expect any dramatic change though.

I have done that many times, not plugged back AC out of sheer laziness sometimes :redface: but I was not aware of the consequences!

Its not 20 min. I checked yesterday, it is 40 min.
But till some days back the battery used to run for exact 2 hours :-/

Thanks for all the info.

Thnak you for all the info, I don't know whether my batteries are LIION or not? but now if I follow the above said procedure with the current battery, can I expect some miracles? :D So you mean to say that I should not work all the time on AC?

Thanks, Milind, I'll be doing that from now on, and pray for miracles :)