M4400 6-Cell battery dying after a year of use

Hi,

My M4400 6-Cell battery goes for about 45min on full charge. Ive had my laptop for a year now. Is this normal that it dies so quickly?

I started noticing this a week or two ago and now on startup I even get a notification saying "your battery life is decreasing, now is a good time to buy a replacement battery".

I dont remember how long my Inspiron 8200 laptops battery lasted but it feels like this one gave in really quickly. I do use my laptop a lot. Its on most of the day.

Any experiences?

 

What does RMClock's battery info > Battery Device page show as the desinged capacity and the fully charged capacity? The latter decreases as the battery loses capacity. Also, when running on battery, the capacity / discharge rate should approximately equal the run time.

One way you may be able to recover some capacity is to fully deplete the battery then recharge it. You may need to disable Windows power management critical alarm in order to run on the battery until it is completely drained. Doing this allows the empty position on the battery to be recalibrated.

John

 

Laptop batteries typically last from 18 months to 3 years depending on use. So at only a year, you probably should be concerned of some problem beyond normal wear and tear. However, that is under the presupposition that the battery was taken care of and not sujected to any adverst treatment or harsh conditions.

 

Im having a problem running this. I downloaded and installed. But it wont start the program. I installed with administravite rights and also tried to run it with administravite rights. Im running Vista 64bit. It says:

"Cannot install or load RTcore64 driver. Make sure you're loading this application from not a read only medium and/or network drive, and that you're logged on with administrator rights."

Im logged in with admin rights and I tried to install where it suggested in C:/Program files(etc)

Sami

 

Ive been indoors all the time. I have never taken the battery out of the computer. I haven't taken any special care of it though. I use the computer the whole day and sometimes I take it to another room and run on battery and when the battery starts running out I plug it in again. Ive only let it run out totally a few times.

 

Ah! 64-bit. Go to the Undervolting Guide and find the link to the signed RTcore64 near the end of the first post.

John

 

Lavalys Everest gives you the same battery info, in the computer/power management section...

 

Fully charged: 28549mWh
Designed capacity: 57720mWh

Heres a screen capture also. A fully charged battery says theres 1h5min left of use. At the moment Im surfing, reading emails and chatting on MSN. No CPU intensive stuff going on.

 

That means you have lost half of the original capacity.

First, has your ownership exceeded the full 12 months of battery warranty. If not, ask Dell for a replacement. If you have passed the 12 months then it's a shame that you didn't notice slightly sooner. I would then try the deep discharge but it may not help.

John

 

I did buy my computer on 30th October 2008 so I should have a good 6 weeks still left. Is there a quote from Dell's site that states this? I tried emailing Dell a couple of times but got no response. Ill call tomorrow.

Thanks for the help!!

Sami