Short Laptop Battery Life
Here are some points concerning a short laptop battery life (or run time):
As your laptop battery ages its normal that the laptop battery life
slowly gets worse and worse. This reflects a gradual decrease in the capacity
of the laptop battery. This is because laptop batteries suffer degradation
through usage - the more you use the battery the quicker the degradation
process and the quicker the laptop battery life will worsen. Degradation
usually occurs because electrolyte migrates away from the electrodes or
because active material falls off the electrodes. There will come a stage
when the laptop battery life is insufficient to meet your needs and you
have to buy a replacement. For the average user a laptop battery will
last between one and three years.
If your laptop battery is relatively new and you are not getting the
laptop battery life that your manufacturer advertised it could be because
it is drawing more power than during manufacturer tests. Find out exactly
how the manufacturers tests were performed and the type of applications
they ran.
If you have a short laptop battery life and you have a NiMH battery
it could be due to the memory effect which causes a battery to hold less
charge. The memory effect can occur when a battery is repeatedly recharged
after only being partially discharged. The battery appears to "remember"
a smaller capacity. There is no way to solve this problem and restore
the original memory of the laptop battery.
There is no "average" laptop battery life since it depends on so many
factors with the main ones being size of laptop monitor, capacity of the
battery and type of apps being run. Most laptop batteries power their
laptops between 1.5 and 3 hours, however as battery technology improves
and laptops become more efficient we are starting to see long laptop battery life and 6 to 8 hours is starting to become common.
For general tips to extend your laptop battery life see our page Tips
to increase laptop battery run time