Extending Laptop Battery Life

October 14, 2005 5:43 PM

Can I replace my lousy laptop battery with a better one? I just bought an Acer Aspire 3000 series laptop and didn't realize how terrible the battery-life was until I got it home. The battery only lasts about an hour. Is there an aftermarket battery I can swap my battery for that lasts longer?

I have searched Google and Metafilter and can't see to find any other options that buying a spare lousy battery. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

posted by JuliaKM to technology (5 comments total)

I'm sure there are compatible batteries out there, but man, an hour seems wrong. Like "send it back" wrong. It's under warranty, right?
posted by mkultra at 5:56 PM on October 14, 2005

http://batterygeek.net/

Get one of those...
I got one. and It is great for my Toshiba laptop.

I think I actually had about 6 hours use on flight one night at FULL power.

it is about the size of small thin portable harddrive.

I thought about getting another oem battery for my laptop but... getting 1.5hour + another 1.5hour didn't make sense for the same money I would have had with the batterygeek battery.

You can also try to adjust powersetting on your laptop powerdown during battery use....
posted by curiousleo at 6:38 PM on October 14, 2005

according to the the specs page 1.5 is the max. but yeah, lots of people make compatible batteries. this link will take you to APC's website - they're one of the bigger names in standalone UPSes and they make replacement batteries. furthermore, check this out - it's a universal battery, plugs into the AC adapter port. (another company makes one too but this was the first link I found.)
posted by mrg at 6:40 PM on October 14, 2005

MobileMeter gives you all the battery information. If the wear level is above 15% (for a new battery) it means it means you got a bad battery. Make sure that your CPU usage isn't at 100%.
posted by Sharcho at 8:47 PM on October 14, 2005

It looks like the Aspire 3000 is a cost-conscious machine with a desktop chip in it. Unless I'm mistaken, the AMD Sempron is an ordinary low-cost desktop chip that is being used in a laptop. This keeps cost down and speed up at the expense of battery life.

Long battery life is the holy grail of laptops. You often have to spend a lot of money to get decent battery life, and even then it is never enough.
posted by b1tr0t at 12:13 AM on October 15, 2005