Battery wear ..... is this normal

hi,
happy chrismas & new year........i bought my dell inspiron 1420 on 12 th nov and the battery is showing a wear level of 2% today (chrismas day). is this normal for Li ion batteries or shud i go for replacement ????

thanx in advance

 

Due to the chemical properties of batteries, they start to degrade as soon as they're made. There's no way around it.

 

Wrong. DELL’s batteries are CRAP. My 9 cell Inspiron 1505 battery was 80% wear in less than an year, got a replacement and after one complete discharge/recharge I already got 4% wear (both batteries were Sanyo). And it was a brand new battery.
My wife’s Lenovo T60 has a Panasonic battery and after one year only has 2% wear. And she treated the battery without any mercy; I am amazed it has only 2% wear. We got what we paid for. A DELL.

 

how do u guys check the battery wear status?

 

to check battery wear, download MultiMeter from here:
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-Oakland/8259/release/0310/mm0310.zip

Run the exe and then reight click, go to options, then to bettery, and you should see battery wear.

 

I obviously can't comment on your wife's T60, but your Dell seems more normal. My R60 was at about 75% after a year.

 

Does it run on win vista? i've tried to launch the exe but it gives me an error saying failed to communicate with ACPI driver. any suggestions?

 

i always use my laptop without the battery which is not as safe but the battery does not wear out.

 

Blame it on the battery manufacturers for making them "bad" while blame Dell for including those manufacturers

 

I have a 2.5 year old HP NX6110, and MobileMeter says that my bettery wear is...........0%!!!

And does anyone know of a program the works under Vista? Cos I wouldn't mind seeing how my SZ battery compares to my HP in a few months!

No, it doesn't work with Vista.

 

It still wears out if not pluged in. Infact, it can go totally dead faster. We buy replacement batteries in bulk and if they sit on our shelves too long without being used, they often wont ever work.

 

I say go for a replacement...

My i1520 battery shows 0% wear and I've been using it very actively since September when it shipped...

I test using Dell's Battery Utility (FN+F3 with Quickset installed) and on the battery itself (though on the battery itself anything less than 20% won't register as each light is 20%).

 

I notice with my 640M the 6cell battery did really good for about a year and a half then all of a sudden it has degraded a lot and drains much quicker. I honestly expected better from it. I would figure 3 years at least but oh well.

 

My battery showed 2% wear level on the second day after I got it.

Is it a refurbished battery or a returned battery ?

 

DeusEx, why is not using battery not as safe? i'm missing something here. thanks.

 

My battery wear level is 7% after 4 days and Technical supports claim that this is normal.

 

its not normal! at that rate the battery will be 100% dead in less than 2 months! call them up, tell them that, and see what they say!

Ask to speak to a supervisor or manager if need be!

 

I would like to know as well. I am not plugging my battery in while I am at home plugged into AC outlet. Shouldn't this logically perserve battery life and not degrade it?

 

Yeah the battery wear thing has hit me too. I only had this for a month and already it pops up the "Battery Health" screen. Says that it's time to order a new battery. The fact that I've only ever got three or four hours off the battery is a bit concerning, Is there a way to "calibrate" Vista's battery meter, I think mine might be a little inaccurate.

 

Thanks, that is what I am thinking. The Tech guy was so incompetent he did not seem to know what the wear level is. He said as long as you are getting 2 to 2 1/2 hours on the 6 cell, it is normal. He said that I have a full year warranty and can get it replaced if it drops dramatically.

 

where do you live mate? If you are in Europe, I can give to the extension of a very helpful XPS supervisor (based in Ireland)...

 

Thanks for the offer though I live in the States.

I e-mailed another Tech rep the following:

There is a program called NHC (Notebook Hardware Control). It is a reputable program that I have used in the past with my other Dell laptops and gave me accurate measurements.

I have not measured battery life exactly but it is normally showing between 2 hours and 2 1/2 hours after disabling battery intensive application like Vista Aero and bluetooth and side bars and using 1/2 brightness and just browsing the internet . I was expecting over 3 hours.

My concern is if the wear level continue to increase at this pace, it might be done in a couple of months.

This could be a defective unit, as I never experienced such a deterioration in a short span.

For now, I am going to watch it closely and see if it get worse.

 

personally I dont trust NHC, its given me iffy temp readings in the past when 3 or 4 other programs have all given the identical readings and NHC is about 15C off!

I use PassMark BatteryMon, it tells you the design specification (in mWh & mAh), the Full Charge Capacity (what it can ACTUALLY hold), and the current charge capacity.

Then all you do is look at the design specification, and the full charge capacity, if they are identical then there is 0% wear, if there is a difference, you can simply divide the full charge capacity by the design spec, multiply by 100 to get it as a %age, then take the number away from 100 to find out what %age of your battery is gone for good!

I know its a bit long, but I find it to be VERY accurate, and its Vista compatible...however its not free...unless you know where to look!

 

Thanks, I will give it a try.

I was actually looking for another program (other than NHC) for comparison and is VISTA compatible.

 

But will it continue at that rate? I don't think I've ever seen any rate of anything involving a battery be linear.

Was that scientific or what?!!

Man... all these problems are scaring me.
My 9 year old Inspiron 7000 that I'm using right now has two of these huge li-ion batteries, one in each bay, and they seem to be chuggin along just fine.

Either they don't make things like they used to... or there's a reason I paid $2500 9 years ago for a laptop.

 

Ok, I downloaded Battery Mon and it seems like a nice battery monitoring software. Thanks

I calculated the wear level to be 4.85% (if using 56000 mWh) or 9.2% (if using 57720 mWh design capacity) compared to 7% using NHC.

 

An update : The wear level now is 12% after 6 days.

 

call them and get it replaced...its just going to get worse and worse!

My SZ is exactly 3 weeks old tomorrow, and it has 0% battery wear according to battery mon! So if yours is 12% in 6 days its not a good sign!

 

Yah, I am sending the whole thing back. I am exchanging it for one with a LED backlit because of heat issue and screen issue.

 

seems like a defective battery, wearing too fast. But is normal for every battery to wear out, and there is some way of using to diminish this effect.

The main things that affect todays used batteries are temperature and to-low or to high-usage. The cooler the battery is mantained the better. It has been proved that more Tº affects the capacity greatly.

The other things to avoid is too high usage, that not meaning how much times is used, but how long is used in one run. Generally speaking, its bad for the battery full capacity to use them below 30-20% charge, because this affects the "living" cells. This is somehow related to why the batteries never discharges themselves completely, they shutdown at 3% or before they are really completely discharged, because it will mean dead for them. If you have AC nearby, try to use it when you get to 20-30%. Use the battery below that only when is needed.


Too low usage is somewhat bad too. Is good that at least every week you use the battery (but you don't have to go below 30%, as explained above). If you are not going to use the battery for a long time, it has been noted that the best percentage of charge to leave is 40%. Keeping it at 100% all the time is not recommended.

Full discharges are not recommended as stated before , but in one case: to use it to recalibrate batteries used for long time. Some say to do a full discharge every 30 discharge cycles or a month.. but i'll only do it if necessary.

what about not using the battery in the laptop?, this is good for the battery in terms of the Tº, but you loose the power backup, and of course the cable-less capability of the laptop, and it will leave a hole in the laptop wich is not very cosmetic, and some manufacturares doesnt recommend it because it can make dust go into the contacts , or deteriorate them.

Finally, the simple guidelines will be.

-Try not to use batteries below 20-30% unless is absolutely necessary.
-If you use AC all the time, try to use every now and then(every weeak) the battery, but not below 20-30%
-If you want to store or are not gonna use the battery for some time, leave it at 40%
-Also don't be afraid to recharge at any charge %. Today lithium batteries have no memory effect wich will harm them.

 

i have had my Vostro for couple months... Taking it to school everyday and charging it pretty much daily. Then I had it plugged in for like a months straight when I got out of school for break.

I just used Herman's instructions for BatteryMon.

Design Capacity: 57720 mWh
Full Charge Capacity: 57720 mWh

It seems like after all that, I still have 0% wear? Is the Batterymon accurate or even close?

For what it's worth, I have the Sanyo cells and my battery says Made in japan. When I exchanged my Vostro 1400, the new laptop had one that was Made in China. I decided to keep the Japanese built one.

 

I've used NHC for battery wear as well; gives me 6% after half a year of useage (mostly on the AC adapter though). With PassMark Batterymon I get the following resutls:
Design: 86850 mWh
Full Charge: 80608 mWh
Current: 86850 mWh

Kind of weird that the current level is higher than the Full Charge Level, right? Is this program right and do I have 0% wear as of yet? The program also says that the battery is charged up to 107.4%. weird...