How Can I Tell How Much Battery Life To Expect?

[waffles]

I've never had a laptop, and I'm finally looking at getting one. Problem is, I have no idea how to tell how much battery life to expect. The ones that I'm looking at go as low as 29 WHr 4-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery and 56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery. Both can go up to 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery, and one has a 53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery option (which says that it has 80% more battery power than 4-cell, but I don't know what it's 80% more than).

[Thanol]

What kind of laptop is it?

I would check at Notebookreview.com though

[waffles]

Vostro 1000. I guess maybe it's too new for a review there, I'd checked and can't find anything that doesn't come from Dell's propaganda.

[chicgeek]

Post a thread with the question there. Someone there is bound to know.

[webgirl]

Not sure if it varies that much by brand. Look at between 3 hours but need to recharge. So, not much time to spare. Also look at reviews from people that have bought them. People are always willing to share their expereinces.

[ScriptMan]

My experience with battery devices in general is to expect about 75-80% of the stated capacity when new. Over time that will degrade a bit.

Screen brightness can be an issue with a laptop or PDA.

Car chargers and or a second PS/charger can make a difference depending on whether you are static or mobile.

It all depends on how and where you plan to use it.

All of that said, bigger is most likely better.

[Taltos]

Hey waffles, looks like they are claiming "up to 4.5 hours". That means with the biggest (9 cell) battery and every power profile option tweaked to absolute minimum power consumption. It probably also means things like not using a 7200 rpm hard drive but using the more power efficient (and slightly slower) 5400 rpm drive. I find it horribly frustrating to set the power profile stuff properly to extend battery life. It means that your screen blanks out in a couple minutes (not a very big deal but minor delays to start using the laptop again) and your hard drive stops spinning after a couple minutes of no access (which is a bigger pain to me because it takes 5 to 10 seconds to spin back up). If you are more patient than me ( not difficult ) then you may not mind this.

The biggest thing to be aware of is how and when you recharge your battery. All batteries, no matter what the manufacturer claims, have a "memory". If you recharge them before they are close to completely discharged, you lessen the "life" or endurance of the battery just a little bit every time. If you do things like turn on your laptop for 10 minutes while out running around and then take it home and plug it in to recharge it, it won't take long before you shorten how long a charge lasts for you. I know a lot of people that don't hardly use their laptop without it plugged in and they mostly just move it and plug it back in. That is about the worst thing you can do. Those people, over the course of a year or so, now can only run for about 5 or 10 minutes on battery until they are willing to buy a new battery.

If you take care to run the battery down to where the OS warns you it is about to shut down before you plug it in, you will extend your battery life and maintain the ability to run for 2, 3, or possibly even 4 hours on your Vostro. My bet is getting 4 hours out of it will be difficult but possible. It wouldn't be in what I consider a usable configuration but that is just me. Getting a second battery can make keeping battery life maxed a lot easier. You always have a second battery fully charged so it is safer to run the battery down to as close to dead as you can and still be able to just swap batteries and keep going. You don't get stuck away from a plug with a dead battery. Otherwise you have to watch where you are when you run your battery all the way down.

Good luck with your new purchase!