Is it my laptop or battery?

Just something that has been bugging me ever since I got my laptop, which was at the end of 2006. Ever since I got the laptop its had terrible battery life. Under 2 hours. It came with 1 512mb ram stick but I upgraded it to two 1gb sticks after half a year or so. Yesterday I changed the 40gb 5400rpm SATA hard drive with a 250gb 5400rpm SATA drive. I've installed the XP it came with, another XP without all the programs that the recovery disk has, Vista UA Lite (unattended and I think it was made by amit) and TinyVista Rev02 over the years. They all have battery life under 2 hours. I've currently installed TinyVista Rev02 onto the new hard drive and set it power saver mode and the battery only lasts up to a maximum of 1:30-2 hours surfing the web.

So PC specs:
CPU: Intel Centrino T1350 @ 1.86Ghz (single core, not dual core)
Ram: 2x1gb
Hard drive: 250gb 5400rpm SATA drive
Battery: 4000mah Li-Ion battery
Processes on average: 31-40

I don't know why my laptop has such little battery life. My brother's XP with LOADS of programs running, probably 45+ processes lasts up to 3 hours and his is PC is a Intel Centrino (single core, 1.50ghz well around there)  1 512mb ram stick and a 40gb hard drive. Whats worse is his laptop is 3-4 years old, and he bought it second hand. Both our screens is 15.4" and his is set to maximum brightness, mine is set to the lowest brightness. His battery is 4400mah and mines 4000mah but I don't think it would make that much of a difference. My PC is a Toshiba Satellite A100 and his is an Acer Travelmate. Whats wrong with my PC or battery? I would really like to know... :'( :'( :'( :'(

Well, you said his laptop is 3-4 years old. Maybe laptops back then didn't use as much power?

Who knows. 2 hours isn't that bad at all, that's about how long my laptops last.

Also I forgot to mention, I have this friend who has a Compaq Presario that costed him $500-$700 brand new and he uses Vista UA Lite. It's got a 1.73ghz celeron processor with 512mb of ram and it lasts around 2:30 hours. I've got the fastest PC out of the three but I have the worst battery life :'(

freshert said:

I've got the fastest PC out of the three but I have the worst battery life :'(

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Uh, 'cording to logic...

Faster PC = Better Processor = More power Required to make it Faster.

Murudai said:

[quote author=freshert link=1216109153/0#2 date=1216116038]I've got the fastest PC out of the three but I have the worst battery life :'(

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Uh, 'cording to logic...

Faster PC = Better Processor = More power Required to make it Faster.

[/quote]
But still... My friends lasts laptop lasts around 1 hour more than mine on batteries and mine is only a tiny bit faster. :-/ Also I would have thought a Centrino processor would consume less power than a Celeron... They advertise it saves power...

2 hours is lots... that's the most you can expect out of any laptop that isn't extremely underpowered. Some laptops that have smaller, dimmer screens, flash based hard drives, and low voltage CPU's, will get 3 or more hours battery life, but it comes at the cost of only having a tiny screen, a 8gb hard drive, and an underpowered CPU.

Another thing is that lithium batteries will lose their ability to hold a charge over time, especially if they've been exposed to heat or are left at a full charge for long periods of time. I have a P4 2ghz centrino that's maybe 5 years old and the battery is down to about 20 minutes on a full charge. When it was new it got an hour to an hour and a half.

For a comparison, my main laptop is a Toshiba U300 subnotebook with only a 13" screen that I keep at low brightness, a core duo t2080 1.7ghz processor, a gig of ram in two sticks, and a 5400rpm 120gb SATA drive... its 4000mAh battery is only like 5 months old, yet I get about 2 hours 15 min on a full charge.

Well I've just removed one of my 1gb ram sticks so now I've got 1gb of ram in one stick... Maybe I should get better battery life from my laptop now. With Firefox, Windows live messenger, a word document, hamachi, IDM and Nod32 open I'm using about 70-72% of my ram (1gb).

ram is hardly a factor in your power consumption - the major factors are your screen, the cpu, and your hard drive

I have a laptop with an Athlon64 3000+
1gb ram
60gb 4200rpm hdd
15.4" widescreen lcd
4.4AH battery pack

and it lasts about an hour per charge

Wow I'm sure glad I didn't buy the same laptop as you did... I mean 1 hour battery life is pretty crap to me.... Do you mind me asking what brand it is? Just a funny story - when my brother first bought his 2nd hand laptop the battery life only lasted 15minutes max.. ;D Then he bought a new battery from Battery World which gave him 3 hours battery life and I was put to shame... :'(

Another thing you can try is cleaning out the fan and heatsink... often these will get clogged with dust and the fan has to work a lot harder to cool the cpu.
On my old laptop the fan was on constantly until I cleaned it, now it only turns on when I'm playing games etc.
In some laptops, the fan/heatsink is accessible under a panel on the bottom of the laptop, which can be removed by a couple screws. If it's *not* accessible, don't bother trying to take the it apart to get at it, it's usually more trouble than it's worth. Just blow a can of compressed air into the vents instead.

freshert said:

Wow I'm sure glad I didn't buy the same laptop as you did... I mean 1 hour battery life is pretty crap to me.... Do you mind me asking what brand it is? Just a funny story - when my brother first bought his 2nd hand laptop the battery life only lasted 15minutes max.. ;D Then he bought a new battery from Battery World which gave him 3 hours battery life and I was put to shame... :'(

Click to expand...

it's an HP, I got the laptop RIGHT when 64 bit cpus were released - my laptop has a full desktop version processor and eats about 60 watts and is the largest hog of power, but I don't mind much as I'm usually around a power source (power inverter for car)

Heh, my old laptop battery lasted 3 mins MAX!! Got a new one that lasts about 2 hours now, but wireless is suckin up power like mad lol

Now thats a seriously dead battery. ;D

It sure was LOL. It was about 4 years old.

Though my laptop isnt the most power efficient thing, the CPU gets up to about 80C under load

Try putting that on your lap LOL!!

lol since i upgraded my hdd(200gb 7400rpm) my battery lasts all of 3 minutes(literally). the batts about 2 years old tho.