Battery life/longevity?

I'm just trying to get a general idea of what the average dell battery performs interms of Battery life (hours per charge and how long before needing to be replaced)
So here's the poll question:
how many hours of battery do you average per charge?

also, how many batteries have you gone through since purchaseing your laptops and what is you current battery wear %?

 

I got between 4-5 hours on my e1505 with the 9 cell battery doing menial work.

I only purchased 1 battery, it came with the machine and I don't know the battery wear % as I sold it quite a while ago.

 

I've never let my battery run out, but according to the timer, it says my 9cell can a little over 5 hours on a full charge.

 

what about the battery wear %?

 

I have almost 3 yrs old Inspiron 1150 with 12-Cell. The longest time is 4 hrs top, of course, I had lowest power setting, it was good for taking notes. Now, I get is about 3:30-45. I am not sure. Thankfully, I got secondary battery.

JC

 

Less then 3 but more than 2 hour with a 6 cell. I wish I have bought the 9 cell instead when purchasing the e1505. Now if I were to get the 9 cell, it would cost me $150 as opposed to $120 .

 

It seems that most people so far are getting low battery life.
Keep the replyies coming.

 

Have you checked eBay? I found a new 9 cell Dell battery for my 1705 for $70 including shipping. I didn't buy it as Dell replaced my failing 6 cell for free (still under warranty).

My old battery, even at its best, got me less than two hours. I'm still testing the new battery, but it looks like I'll get 2.5+ hours, even with my new 7200rpm drive!

 

I have a 6 cell for my laptop and when I use my battery power and have my underclocking settings on I can usually get it going for a little over 3 hours. Basically 3 hours plus enough time to save, lose at hearts and shutdown.

 

too help me understand more and have a more accurate picture, could the people who post from this point on post what laptop they have and it's age along with the battery size/wear/ect. ?

 

I did, didnt I?.

JC

 

not you, some of the others.
thanks anyways though.

 

I've got a new D820 with WUXGA screen 2GB of ram, 9 cell battery. I'm getting at least 3.5 hours of battery life but never have run it all the way down. It may be an hour or two more. My 4 year old Toshiba battery life was about 90 minutes, so little i rarely relied on battery power. 3.5 hours is enough for most session where AC is not available. It's a big improvement over the older notebook. The cost of a second battery doesn't bother me but i don't want to lug it round for the rare occaisions it might come in handy.

 

keep the post coming I'd like to build up a some what data base of results with this thread.

 

9 cell D420, 6:30+ w/ lowest light setting, and wifi on
optimized software (i.e. NHC)
Uninstalled unneeded software and utilities.

The battery has 68W, slightly depreciate @ 66W,
10-11W/hr depend on usage.
Watching RMVB, Divx will lower to 5:hr, but I ususally plug in the power

and it charges to 80% w/in a hour, so no problem if I need it in a hurry.

 

6 Cell - 3-4 hrs - Mostly runs on Power

 

wow, I wish I could have that kind of battery life.

 

3 hours max! with my 6 cells Inspiron 6400

 

1 312-0422 80 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery, for XPS M1710

9 mo. old, 8% wear level. Got around 2:15>2:30 new, now around 1:50>2:00.

EDIT: Actually, I've found I'm still getting 2:15-2:30! Pity.

 

Well, it seems that nobody has topped my 24% battery wear yet but it seems that everyone so far has more or less the same sitiuation with their batteries.

 

How can i increase my battery life on 6400 with 6 cells? I have around 3h with wireless on now...

 

Phillip, we have different processors and GPU's. Life and "wear" are going to be all over the board.

If you get 1 year or less..bad battery..it happens.

If you get 3 years with 70% remaining..good battery. Each charge cycle subtracts a bit of life out the buggers.

FWIW, I'm down to 90-95% at a year old 6 cell. I get about 10 seconds if playing Oblivion on battery

Batteries are a PITA with laptops so are not a good investment, just a tool.

 

yeah, I know, that every one has different systems configs, that's why I wanted to hear form all dell users so that I could get a good Idea of what to expect from each model.

 

My 9 cell bettery is at 34% wear and run time has dropped to just over three hours with wifi on and screen dimmed to half of full brightness on my 6000.

 

I can squeeze out 6+ hours on my 1210, if I'm conservative about what hardware I leave running and turn the screen down.

 

I get 2-3 hours but theirs no option?

regards.

John.

 

3-4 hours, laptop/battery is only a week old. I do multitask quite a bit with downloading songs, watching videos, surf web, burning stuff, editing photos..

In the beginning I was getting like around 2hrs on a full charge.. i was kinda worried until now it's cycled a couple of times and its giving me sometimes even higher than 4 hours.

Specs below.

 

Inspiron 6400 - 9 Cell battery. I get around 4.5 hours. 5.5 if I undervolt.

No idea about battery wear.

 

My estimates, running Windows Vista on the M1210 [ screen brightness at lowest setting, power setting to Power Saver, 7400 Go, 7200 RPM HDD, simply surfing the internet, or doing some programming work in Eclipse]:

6 cell battery: 2 hours
9 cell battery: 3 - 3.5 hours

If I had to absolutely depend on my M1210 to at least guarantee, a certain amount of battery time at full charge, those would be my numbers. I multi-task quite a bit, and when I use my laptop, I use it. I try not to hold back, as that's the point of having the lappy in the first place.

 

I am disappointed with my D620's battery life for just 9 months. The 9 cell is lasting no longer than 2 hours with WIFI on.

I am debating on getting a new Dell versus 3rd party notebook battery (if I have to replace it yearly, why spend 3 times the cost?).

 

2:45 hours max! with my 6 cells Inspiron 6400 /1505
I work 90% with AC Power on, only in special occasion.
Never tested on 6 cells to play a DVD.
I have the battery from April last year
__________________
Dell Inspiron 6400\1505 T2300 520MB RAM

 

It's in my sig.

 

yeh it does chew up quite a lot of battery on the 17's. i get roughly 2-2.5 hrs on full settings though on my e1705

 

3.75-4 hours if I try hard to conserve...

9 cell (80 watt hour)
Inspiron 9200
Dothan 2.0GHz
ATI Radeon 9700 Mobility
Bluetooth
Atheros chipped Wistron CM9 MiniPCI

I keep the USB hub off, as well as the Bluetooth. The wifi card is configured to it's power-saving mode. Not really sure how much that all contributes to charge life.
I run RMClock.exe to undervolt my CPU. Stepping is enabled, of course, and the stock voltage range of my CPU is .998 V @ 600 MHz to 1.34 V @ 2 GHz. I have it under-volted to .7 V @ 600 MHz to 1.116 V @ 2 GHz.
I also run I8kFanGUI to control both my CPU & GPU fans. The program allows for 4 profiles, and one I have set up for power conservation, where the fans won't kick on until a temp threshold of 60-65. Of course, if I'm trying to conserve to squeeze out battery charge, I'm not going to be doing much to heat them up anyway.

I replaced my screen last year with a Philip's (was a dying Samsung) and now I've lost the ability to control backlight brightness. I know that if I could turn it down, I could get 4.25 hours out of the battery.

I rarely use the computer with everything wrapped up so tight... -What's the point of having decent components if you're going to cripple them. Typically I get around 3 hours from my battery.

This will be my third battery in 28 months. My original was recalled, and replaced with a 6 cell, but I don't use it much. I blew through a 9 cell in about 8 months to where it only holds half it's original capacity. I'm 4 months into my second 9 cell, which is still at around 95%, I think.

-What utility are most of you using to find the remaining capacities? I have found some variances in some utilities' readings.

 

I get about 2 1/2 hours per charge with 0% wear on the battery. It's a standard 6 cells battery.

 

wow thats dissapointing to hear how much did u originally get (in hours)

 

My notebook (latitude D420) lasts about 4-5 hours on the 9-cell battery using wifi. Lasts about 1 and a half hours on the 4-cell.

My laptop (latitude D610) lasts 1 and a half - 2 and a half hours, possibly more.

 

I get about 3½ hours with a 9 cell batteries on my Inspiron 6400 although I don't put the light settings to minimal, I keep them in the middle. The wireless card is always powered on wich also drains it a little. I bought my Inspiron in June 2006 and I'm on my second battery. Last one died out on me 1 month ago, just days after the warranty ended. Bought a new one on Ebay for half the Dell price.

 

How are you guys determining what your "wear" is? I haven't really used my laptop on battery yet, only once, and it said it had between 6-10 hrs remaining (it changed dependign on what I was doing)

 

I've had my laptop for a little over 7 months and I'm getting the popup telling me I should order a new battery. Any recommendations on how to check my battery health?

And if it is in need of a replacement, any chance Dell would cover it under warranty?

 

Take battery out, press and hold remaining charge button for 3-4 seconds. 1 light good, 5 lights (mine!) bad. Search Dell and this forum for amount of "wear" for each light. I think 5 lights means over 60% life used.

 

Latitudes are excellent on batteries. You need to be more specific than just "Dell."

 

Do Latitudes use 7900GS or GTX GPU's? Its the power hungry gpu's and 17" screen lights that's really rough on batteries. BTW which post about just "Dell" were you referring to?

Cheers

 

That's weird my E1705 just shows the current battery life, It doesn't show wear as you describe doing it?

 

4-5 hours on low-power stuff. Could probably get 5-6 if I really needed to but I like to listen to music and generally do something that drains a bit of power. 9-cell battery.

No idea on battery wear, must be pretty low though since it's less than a month old.

You're missing 0-1, 2-3, and 5-6 hour options, by the way. Maybe you should ask a mod to add those?

 

From the Dell battery FAQ;

Q For what use is the strip of LED lights on my battery?
A Most Dell batteries have an LED indicator that allows users to see how much run time and how much overall battery life are available at the touch of a button.

To check battery charge, press the button and the number of lights that appear will tell you charge status. If all lights appear, you have a fully charged battery. Each light that appears accounts for approximately 20% charge.

To check the battery health, press and hold the status button on the battery charge gauge for at least 3 seconds. If no lights appear, the battery is in good condition and approximately more than 80 percent of its original charge capacity remains. Each light represents incremental degradation. If five lights appear, approximately less than 60 percent of the charge capacity remains, and you should consider replacing the battery.