I have an Acer laptop - maybe not the best quality but I'm happy enough with it, given the price. It's perhaps three years old max.
The battery has died. It's only been used on battery a few times - mostly mains.
Looking at Ebay, replacements range from about 20 to 150 quid. Strangely the only one with a 3 year - rather than one year - warranty is at the lower end price wise.
Comments?
Dunno if it will, but does it run on mains without the battery? If so, run it this way and use the battery when needed, occasionally running it almost fully down, then re-charging it before removing it and using the laptop on mains only again. Older batteries were prone to chemical [1] 'memory' so if they were never regularly run down then they were barely able to sustain a charge.
I have also successfully brought dead laptop batteries back to life using my old radio control race car battery charger which cycles the charge negative pulses every so often to break down the 'memory'.
[1] Easiest way to explain it.
You should be able to find firms that exchange or recondition laptop batteries. ISTR that with some battery packs you could take them apart and replace the internals, but never tried it. Angle grinder?
Does any of this apply to LiIon?
Ahh .. no. Sorry, well, truth is I dunno .. I don't know if any of the batteries I've revived have been LiIon or what ...
I thought LiIon, or is it Lipo?, were immune to the memory effect, BICBW. Hopefully someone else may know for certain.
I suspect not - mistreat a LiIon battery and things can get messy.
Recently replaced Acer and Azus netbook batteries after similar period with relative cheapies from eBay. So far no problem. Note that the capacities can vary, sometimes 3, 6, or 9 cells. Put a 9 cell one on wife's Acer instead of existing 3 cell. Fits fine (more bulky, but actually angles the keyboard better) and of course much better life.
LiIon batteries are pretty poor for use in laptops (other than their energy/weight density.) They don't like to be left fully charged (as per most laptops) as this wrecks their capacity fairly quickly and they don't like to be left completely flat. And, if you can keep between those, they lose a percentage of their capacity every year anyway.
I half charge my laptop battery and keep it in a drawer for when I need it.
@Dave, there's no reason you can't open up the pack and replace the cells as per any other tool. They're a standard size, only gotcha is the extra thermistors and other gubbins to monitor battery voltage to deal with.
No
Flattening them destroys them.
they are best kept cool and half charge, but even so tend do die in the
3-5 years span.
The general rule is that nothing that applies to nickel cells applies to lithium. They are utterly different in almost every respect.
Bought Toshiba battery from here:
Paying for a 3yr warranty is pretty pointless.
L-Ion do not last very long when on mains all the time. Typically they will last 18 months, but do provide a useful "inbuilt UPS" at low cost compared to a bulky external UPS and SLA battery. Laptops are useful if you have unreliable overhead power in winter.
L-Ion have a finite life, about 300-500 charges. The actual figure is determined by a chip which monitors cell voltage, if one goes too low (flattened) the battery can not be safely charged. The rumour of "cycle count chip" is not quite true, although a manufacturer may someday try it.
L-Ion require careful storage for 3-5yr life. Store at 40% charge not 100%, store in a fridge not warm ambient.
Go to Ebay, search for "genuine Acer XXXX battery". Some will be UK, others China/HK which you may want to ignore. Some will be "new", some will be "used 100% indicated", some "used 72% indicated" or "lasts 1hr 40min".
Some people buy new batteries for =A325-37 for airline trips and keep them in the fridge at 40% charge, then buy a used "1hr 20min charge" for =A312 which they use in the laptop all the other time just as an integral UPS or if transitioning to a docking station requires one to be present (power often removed).
I would not pay more than =A340 for a battery, if the cell type is listed Sanyo & Panasonic (now same firm) are good, Sony are ok, generic I would try to avoid because actual life can be somewhat less if mobile phone experience is anything to go by. Going for "genuine" means it has the makers name on it, not just identical looking.
If your keyboard is getting tatty Ebay can be good for replacements, but price can vary hugely - =A336 for months on end and then there is an glut of =A39.99-11.99 units UK keyboard & UK supplier. So it can pay to be patient.
Thanks.
My new netbook has an option to keep the battery at 50% charge rather than 100% charge, to extend the overall life of the battery if the machine is mainly left on charge, obviously you have to set it back to
100% in advance if you want to fully charge the battery for a stint away from the charger ...
Be very very very careful of Chinese sellers on eBay. A good many of those .co.uk battery websites are also in China too. As well as the fact that some Chinese sellers lie and are selling fakes, you really aren't going to want to send it back to China if it breaks. Laptop batteries tend to break months down the road rather than immediately - when you're out of Paypal/etc buyer protection schemes.
I've had two aftermarket battery replacements in different laptops and both have lasted significantly less than the original batteries. I'm about to try to return one that only lasted 6 months, and that's from a genuine UK supplier... will see how it goes.
Theo
I was about to replace the battery in my Acer netbook because it wouldn't charge at all, did a quick Google first: turns out it was a BIOS issue. Flashed it with the latest BIOS from the Acer site, now the battery charges and works fine.
There may be a BIOS update available for the OP to help with constantly running on AC. Dunno about Acer but I've used a number of Dells over the last few years, and they've all had BIOS releases to cope with that. The firmware is updated to partially discharge the battery and re-charge every so often, to prevent the always-charged problem you mention.
Nick
Would 4.5 years run on mains nearly all the time with not much reduction in battery be evidence against that?
Business HP, so not cheapest consumer kit though.
My experience with my last laptop - a Toshiba, nothing fancy. Something like five years and then replaced but that was partly to get an ingerently longer usable time (i.e. bigger battery) rather than original not working.
And the HP I am using right now does fully charge - but does not keep on re-charging - it waits until the charge has dropped some way from 100% before deciding a top up is needed. Two years and no obvious deterioration. (Bound to fail next week having typed that.)
No, it does vary. Some laptops use smart battery life management to maximise life whilst sat on mains, others do not.
However, there is a difference between "it says 100%" and "timing it", for example this Thinkpad battery indicator says 100%...
- Remaining Capacity 31.30Wh
- Full Charge Capacity 31.56Wh
- Design Capacity 37.44Wh
- Sanyo cells
So whilst it is 100% charged its actual chargeable capacity is 16% below original. You have to trawl through the statistics to actually find out what condition the battery is in and ideally re-calibrate occasionally (if applicable).
Indeed, avoid the China battery sellers. Lack of a warranty with a China battery may be least of your issues - L-Ion is a volatile chemistry.
Go for the ex-lease, refurbishers & spare parts crowd in the UK with a proven history re sales and genuine original battery. Better to have a used at 88% of design capacity with 50 cycles and Sanyo cells than a Chinese new knockoff even if it is brand new re L-Ion. Some clones also lack feet so your laptop can "wobble".
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