My laptop battery doesn't last for 7 hours, what's wrong?

stevenup7002

Hi, my acer laptop Which I got last Friday is a brilliant laptop which the battery is supposed to last for 7 hours, when I got it I charged it for 16 hours even though it said it was charged in the first 5 minutes, the next day I used the battery and it lasted for 4 hours, next day it lasted for 2:30 next it lasted for 1 next it lasted for 2, How do I make it last the way it's supposed to?

motrocco

first off manufactures do lie about battery life. It will prolly last 7 hours if you are doing some really light surfing then making dinner then more light surfing.

Power management;- set this so that the battery life lasts longer. Don't know where the setting would be but I'm sure if you double click the battery icon a configuration panel should open.

Bet your watching dvd's n stuff on it, well it won't last much longer than the length of DVD.

beller b

7 hours???? not a hope!!! you were had .. If your getting 4 hours you are doing well..I invested €150 on a Targus power adapter ..Runs off mains or dc... Unless your on the beach you are close to one or the other..

Ruu_Old

never last 7 hours, you will be lucky if it lasts 4 hrs. I think thats the average time a Lithium Ion battery will last you in any laptop, or so it says.

uggy

ok i got one of lidl laptops there last year, pretty good, is 2and half good for a battery or can i step it a notch?

Ruu_Old

what type of battery is it? If its a Ni-Mh one, then you'll get more hours out a Li-Ion battery because it will hold its charge even when the laptop is off, unlike Ni-Mh ones.

ressem

You can bring down the screen brightness to bare minimum, make sure that wireless is off, keep cd/hdd/processor activity to a minimum, set speedstep to always run at lowest speed (though this should be the default), change times for hard drive spindown.

or add another battery

carbsy

Don't forget WI-FI would take a few hours off the battery life too.My Centrino is quoted as 6 hours but with WI-FI on and me surfing I'm lucky to get 2.5hrs tbh.Don't believe the hype!

cutepape

A simple solution.

Instead of just shutting your lid down on the lappie when youre done.

Use start -> turn off computer -> turn off

Otherwise it just go in to hibernation and that requieres battery juice...

so.. do a propper shutdown and you get some more battery.
And... but it on max battery when on battery.

if you do that and follow the other advises from posters.. you should be able to get some extra time.

I have around 4h of battery life
Pentium mobile 755 2Ghz, 1Gb RAM and 60gb HDD 7200rpm.. so I'm pretty happy with 4 hours..

jlang

cutepape wrote:

Otherwise it just go in to hibernation and that requieres battery juice...

Hibernation doesn't require battery juice - it writes the contents of RAM to the disk and then powers down. It's standby that still sucks some power. Using hibernation arguably requires less because it comes back to life quicker than a full restart. I have standby set when I close the lid, but if I tap the power button the lappy hibernates. To actually power down, I have to go to Start->Turn Off Computer, but I end up not doing that too often.

LeperKing

Undervolting.....
http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=70943

LK

rsynnott

Soon, efficient betavoltanic batteries will be commercially available. 10 years of power. Possibly not for this application tho (A betavoltanic battery relies on converting beta radiation directly to electricity; there's recently been a breakthrough allowing efficient ones).