My laptop needs more battery life

WesFox13 · Post by **WesFox13** » 2007-09-26 07:50pm

Hey all, I recently (About 2 or 3 months ago) bought a laptop (A HP Pavilion dv6000) to use for my college work. It's an ok system but the major con for it is the battery life. Is there any way to increase the battery life of my laptop?

Here are my specs:
Intel Core duo processor 2.00 GHz
Nvidia GeForce 8400M GS card
177 GB of hard drive space
Slightly a little more than 2 GB of RAM
Windows Vista

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2007-09-26 07:52pm

Get a better battery? Shut down all unnecessary software when running it? That's about it really.

Darwin · Post by **Darwin** » 2007-09-26 07:56pm

A few things.. most of which can be accessed under power settings

turn down the brightness of the backlight
underclock the video card when on battery
set the system to enter low power mode sooner
keep the CPU usage low

Lisa · Post by **Lisa** » 2007-09-26 09:08pm

not sure what vista has, but you can go through your startup items/services and dump alot of the preloaded crap that OEM's ship on their systems. downgrading to XP might help too.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-09-26 09:11pm

A laptop with poor battery life? Say it isn't so!

Mess with your power-using stuff. As said, drop the backlight, have the display sleep earlier, don't keep discs in the drive.

Drewcifer · Post by **Drewcifer** » 2007-09-26 09:14pm

It depends on what you mean exactly. If you're just looking to extend the time that you can use your system while on battery power, the above advice should help. As well, disable your NIC and wifi when on battery power.

However, if your problem is that the battery isn't lasting as long as it used to, you'll need to do two things:

1. Go through a few complete discharge and recharge cycles. This should help reduce any charge memory your battery has.

2. Once you get a fully charged battery, take it out of your laptop, and use your power supply adapter whenever possible. I only put the battery in my laptop when I absolutely have to and after 6 months, my battery still holds a full 4 hour charge, just like when it was new.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-09-26 11:31pm

Drewcifer wrote:It depends on what you mean exactly. If you're just looking to extend the time that you can use your system while on battery power, the above advice should help. As well, disable your NIC and wifi when on battery power.

However, if your problem is that the battery isn't lasting as long as it used to, you'll need to do two things:

1. Go through a few complete discharge and recharge cycles. This should help reduce any charge memory your battery has.

2. Once you get a fully charged battery, take it out of your laptop, and use your power supply adapter whenever possible. I only put the battery in my laptop when I absolutely have to and after 6 months, my battery still holds a full 4 hour charge, just like when it was new.

I still use my T22's (mostly) dead battery as a spacefiller when not using it. I don't think cycling power helps w/ Li-ion batteries

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2007-09-27 02:42am

From here

Lithium batteries seem to be everywhere these days. We can find them in our cellphones, laptops, portable media players and etc. We all want to make our batteries last as long as possible, but some well intentioned advice from friends, could be harming your Lithium battery’s life span.

1. Battery Memory - When I first got my new cellphone, my friend recommended to fully drain the battery before recharging it. His reasoning was connected to the idea of battery memory. Allowing the battery to fully discharge then recharging to max, supposedly gives you the complete battery capacity. Otherwise, if you simply charged from the half way point to max battery capacity, the battery would treat the half way point as the empty point, thus cutting your battery capacity in half.

Problem is battery memory doesn’t apply to Lithium batteries, this advice was meant for Nickel based batteries. Fully discharging your Lithium battery frequently can actually be quite harmful to your battery’s health, possibly rendering it completely unusable if energy levels go too low.

The good news is today’s lithium batteries have a safety circuit in place to insure the battery doesn’t reach the point of no return. The safety circuit isn’t fool proof of course, if you leave your battery completely drained for a few days, even the circuit’s protective measures won’t save it.

2. Battery Calibrating - There is some benefits to fully discharging your lithium battery periodically, for laptops this can be especially important. If you start to notice your battery meter is becoming more and more inaccurate, it may be time for some battery calibration. By allowing your lithium battery to fully drain, this will help the battery recalibrate allowing for more accurate measurements of battery life. This should be done once every 30 charges or when you notice battery readings are off.

3. Consequences of Heat - Another enemy of Lithium battery life is heat. If you were to leave your laptop plugged in and running for a year, you should expect the lithium battery capacity to be anywhere between 60% to 80% of it’s original max capacity. This is why people that use their laptops as desktop replacements will notice greatly reduced battery life performance after one year of use. This issue can be resolved by removing the battery while using a corded power source. Now you may want to check with your manufacturer ahead of time to check for safety concerns, some manufacturers have mentioned problems such as moisture and dust collecting in the battery casing.

4. Battery Storage - If you plan on not using the Lithium battery for prolonged periods of time, then you’ll want to have the charge level at 40% and place the battery in the fridge (not freezer). Storing the battery at 100% charge level applies unnecessary stress and can cause internal corrosion. On the other hand, if the charge is too low, the battery can become permanently unusable, due to battery self discharge. This is why manufacturers recommend storing your Lithium battery at 40% charge, rather than either extreme.

The tips on that page come from Battery University, and I've been following their advice about storing the battery at 40% (though I just put it on a shelf, not in the fridge) for years.