Battery Capacity: 18% (Poor)

Hello,
I have a T42P and recently installed xubuntu linux and when o boot i get the notice that my battery is poor and has only 18% capacity (yes a 3 years old 9 cell battery)

is there a way to fix/make it better or i have to purchase a new one from ebay ?

Best Regards,

 

It's really best to just purchase a new one.

 

Unless you want to 'splode I would buy a new one.

 

Most likely you battery is done but you may want to read this:

" Default Battery Tech. for those interested
Thought I'd throw this on here, though a bit windy. I see many posts about batteries, battery life and ways to prolong these expensive power sources for our lappys. Some are a bit inaccurate.
I've spent quite a bit of time researching rechargeable batteries, conditions they like, charge circuitry, etc.

As we all know, there are basically 3 types of portable electronics battery types. those are the Nickel Cadmium (NiCd), Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMh), and the one very much in use today, the Lithium Ion (Li) battery. Most laptops in the last few years use the latter.

Just a few words about the plus and minuses of each.
NiCd's have a decent charge rate, fairly good discharge rate but typically suffer from what is called the memory effect. That is, they must be periodically discharged to a low voltage and then recharged. If that cycle is not followed, i.e., you leave it almost always on the charger, ultimately the battery will develop internal shorts substantially diminishing it's capacity and time between charges.

Occasionally, they can be rejuvenated by a very hard discharge and then recharge such as what some have stated in their posts. Once a NiCd starts this downward slide though it won't be too long before it goes west. The charge circuit for a NiCd, and for that matter a NiMh battery, do not need to be very complex as most are just fed a constant current until they reach full charge voltage. The device does require a little smarts though to shut itself off before reaching 10% of full charge. NiMh has a new formulation that allowed much less of that memory effect when not following the normal discharge cycles required by NiCDs, but it is still somewhat susceptible to it. Again, maximum life for these are achieved by going through the normal charge/discharge cycles. Overall life of NiMh is less though.

Another issue to remember is self-discharge. That is how much the battery will discharge on it's own (shelf time), not under load. This can be fairly high, sometimes as high as a few percent a day. NiMh and NiCd are fairly high.

Now, LiIon, is the latest and greatest. High capacity, low weight, great temperature range (especially toward colder temps) and absolutely no memory effect. But like anything, it does have it's drawbacks. First, it requires a very intelligent charge/discharge circuit. Without going into a bunch of tech specs, basically Li batteries hate to be discharged below a certain percentage, don't tolerate overcharging very well and are bit more susceptible to long term high temperatures. There is no rejuvenation possible by hard discharge. In fact, that will surely finish it off if it's already low.

They have a much better self-discharge rate (the length of time sitting on a shelf that the battery discharges itself). However, a LiIon should never be allowed to almost fully discharge. If it does you can kiss the battery goodbye. That's why the intelligent charge/discharge circuitry is an absolute. The powered device must shutoff before the battery reaches 20-30% of full charge. Leaving the battery on a shelf for a long period of time with no charging will also ultimately kill it. I also mentioned that the LiIon battery has no memory effect which is true. However, it also attains maximum capacity and life with regular discharge and charge cycles (not an absolute requirement but does help the battery). Basically every month or so run your device (laptop in our case) on battery power until the battery capacity is ready to shutdown the lappy. Then plug the AC back in till the battery is fully charged. You would be amazed at how the capacity will increase after a few of these cycles.

One final recommendation, if you'll forgive my windiness, if you typically run the laptop on AC, the batteries in laptops will get a longevity boost by just pulling the battery and setting it aside. Laptops run quite warm internally and this has the effect of shortening the battery's lifetime, especially LiIons. Hope this adds some insight into these great power sources.

Rick"

This was posted by someone else some time ago in the Averatec forum.