Comments on: Extending Laptop Battery Life

Question: Extending Laptop Battery Life

JuliaKM — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 17:43:40 -0800

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.

By: mkultra

mkultra — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 17:56:25 -0800

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?

By: curiousleo

curiousleo — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 18:38:25 -0800

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....

By: mrg

mrg — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 18:40:18 -0800

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.)

By: Sharcho

Sharcho — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 20:47:13 -0800

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%.

By: b1tr0t

b1tr0t — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 00:13:53 -0800

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.