Notebook battery life running F@H

mcwc

I used X-bit labs' BatteryEater Pro 2.0 to find out the battery life of my notebook and was surprised with the results when F@H running @ 100% on battery power. Using the default settings, there was a 15 minute difference in the battery life from base benchmark to the benchmark with F@H running @ 100%. Now, keep F@H running while I'm using my notebook at school when AC is not available.

Here are my results (from a fully charged battery till it shut itself off):
Base: 2hr 45min.
F@H @ 100%: 2hr 30min.
My notebook specs are in my sig.

Download BatteryEater Pro 2.0 here:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/mobile/battery-eater/BEPro.zip


Let's see what other notebooks can do. List the basic specs of your notebook.

KingFish

I suspect mine has a far greater difference than yours although I haven't performed your test yet. I'll try to get to it for curiosity sake.

KingFish

shwaip

I'm curious, when you tested this, did you unplug the AC after starting up or before you turned the computer on. I know my laptop throttles to 1.2ghz if I turn it on without the AC plugged in, and stays at 1.7 if I unplug after it boots to windows.

mcwc

I booted my notebook with AC plugged in. In BEPro, I checked the option to start the benchmark when the AC is unplugged.

Geeky1

Well, at the moment, <5 minutes, most likely. My stupid primary battery crapped out over spring break (I suspect that at almost 2 years of daily use, with several charge cycles per day, it's hit its limit of charge cycles). I'll try it once I get a replacement battery for it.

primesuspect

omg my wife's laptop use to have completely fresh ass battery life (5-7 hours) and now it's 14 1/2 minutes!

battery dead

Cyclonite

Yeah I have a battery here that does 2 minutes. I use it when I have to move my laptop really fast at home. Then I have another that lasts about 2-3 hours depending on how much I use the laptop. Batteries are so expensive!

Straight_Man

primesuspect wrote:

omg my wife's laptop use to have completely fresh ass battery life (5-7 hours) and now it's 14 1/2 minutes!

battery dead

Prime and Trekky:

there are TWO ways to charge batteries, and some have thermal switches also.

The second way is a deep cycle charge, consisting of a set of charges with cooldown between them. Basically, box will be out of service for up to 36 hours, as I recommend this deep charge cycle:

shut down O\S.

Reset thermal switch button if you have one, on battery. Probably not marked as such, but if you have a square thing that looks like a flat button on your laptop battery, then that is your thermal safety reset.

Having reset it, try this charging cycle timing set-- charge for 6-9 hours, then unplug and let sit for 4-6 hours so battery cools down. Repeat times two or three (IBM says up to three, those boxes now all have thermal-protected batteries). IBM uses same battery tech as does Dell and others, for farily recent laptops, insofar as chemical structure of cell (not connectors). So, most laptop batteries will respond to this treatment.

Then put laptop back in service, see if time between charges gets much longer. You might be surpirsed how often this works-- about 60-70% of the laptops I do this to go back out acting much more normally as far as charge and run time after charge while not connected to power. This is a once a year to once every thtree months maint thing that most mfrs do not doc, as they would rather sell you a battery. Time between this process being needed will deoend on how hot battery is while being charged and drained.

John D.

Cyclonite

When you say unplug to let cool down, you mean unplug the laptop, but leave it on so the battery discharges?

mcwc

What is the first way Ageek? And my battery doesn't have a thermal reset switch.

Cyclonite

mcwc wrote:

What is the first way Ageek? And my battery doesn't have a thermal reset switch.

Nor does mine.