Laptop accessories forum: How long will a battery hold its charge for?

For example I have my laptop to dim the display a little for big power savings. On top of that it's a 15.6 inch screen so I get more time than a similar 17 inch screen. I also set the CPU to throttle back to 2 percent when nothing is going on and have the screen turn off after 5 minutes of non-use under battery power.

I get more minutes than I read in the reviews.

But if I were to not do all that, then I bet the number would not be as good.

The answer is "it depends."

Assuming I am buying brand new official batteries and charge them up fully, then remove them from the laptop, how long can I expect them to hold a full charge for?

Do they start draining as soon as they're removed from the computer?

My time limit is a week, so if they can hold full charge for a week, that's fine.

At the moment I will have one battery (my current one) IN the laptop, plus up to three batteries that will be charged up the day before I leave. I'm trying to establish whether or not the batteries NOT in the laptop will retain their charge or if a battery needs to be in the laptop to hold its charge.

(I usually disable battery charging using Dell QuickSet if I know I'm not going to be moving the laptop around, so I know a battery IN the laptop can hold its charge even when not being charged up continually by the power supply.)

It's a Li-Ion battery. The current one is a 6-cell but apparently 8-cell "extended life" ones are available.

Just tried Googling "li-ion loses charge" and Firefox promptly crashed. I'm using the 3.6 Beta 3, which appears to have the same problem as the Beta 1 and Beta 2 - the entire browser will crash whenever I Google search. I did get a glimpse of the first search result in the 2 seconds or so before it went down and it appears that NiMH and Li-Ion batteries lose the most holding charge, which is annoying.
Unfortunately, I can't buy a laptop battery of a different battery technology because they don't make them.

Battery run-time on a laptop is difficult to determine.
Actual battery running time depends upon the power demands made by the equipment. The use of the screen, the hard drive and other laptop accessories results in an additional drain upon the battery, effectively reducing its running time. The total run-time of the battery is also dependent upon the design of the equipment. Generally, a Hi-Capacity battery will run 30% to 50% longer than the old battery did when it was new.

Sounds like you already know you need more than 2.25 hrs of battery life to get your work done....

Operating systems also strain or help your battery life, as this article shows- http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10323148-56.html?tag=mncol

Most likely only Word, possibly Excel and maybe a couple of other programs. I saw the media players eat battery power so I won't be using them.

I acquired it from my brother when it was about a year old and I've had it roughly a year now.

The battery never ran for more than 2 1/2 hours. If a 12-hour battery was made for the Dell Vostro 1710, I'd buy it like a shot.

I've found by switching off the sound, reducing screen brightness to minimal and turning off Bluetooth and the wireless, I can maximise the length of time it'll run. But I still won't get more than a bit over 2 hours - it's programmed to hibernate at 3% battery. I usually close everything anyway just before it shuts down.

It isn't as old as I thought. When I got it from my brother, he gave me the paperwork and it says he got it September 2008 - so it's actually about 18 months old.

Maybe I should just make off with my dad's netbook for the duration. He reckons he gets 8 hours' battery life.

I sometimes use the battery to "hold" while I'm moving the computer from one power-point to another.

I've heard that the battery will drain to some extent if left in the laptop while it's plugged into the mains. I tend to disable the battery charging in Dell QuickSet (it has an option for that) except when I've been using it and need to recharge it.

How fast does hibernation drain the battery? I use it quite a lot.

The salesman at the computer store that I buy from told me that when I am at home, always use the AC and pull the battery completely out. In addition, when you do run down the battery, keep it plugged in for several hours, so it can get a FULL charge.

My daughter refuses to listen to me and plugs it in for only 45 minutes - 1 hour, and then she wonders why it drains in a matter of 15-20 minutes or so. I bought her a brand new Acer laptop in June and told her to ALWAYS charge it for at LEAST 5-6 hours (while she is sleeping), but again, she didn't listen. She had the battery useless in only 3 months.

~ Barry

Do you mean to say that if you take out a fully charged battery and put it back in when you need it, even though you have not charged it up again, that counts as another cycle? If that IS what you are saying, that makes perfect sense to always keep it in and never let it drain. Maybe the salesman I talked to didn't know about those new batteries.