laptop battery

[Stewart]

I cannot find where to pose this question so am trying here first. My son has a Sony laptop, one year old running windows 7 64 bit and as he is in the merchant navy he has 2 batteries for it. He has found that no matter which battery is in they will not hold their charge even when the computer is not in use (left with me at home for a 3 week period). Once he left the computer with battery out and it appeared to hold its charge better then. I remember my brother having the same problem with a laptop and wonder if this is a common problem, does anyone know? And if so is there anything that can be done. Thank you

[Paul - xxx]

Check that when he turns the laptop off it actually is turning off and not just hibernating, especially if he uses the power button to turn on and off!

Sons laptop (Dell) had a similar issue, power button set to hibernate, lid closed set to sleep mode .. he used the power button thinking it was turning off when it was only hibernating .. battery fubar'd quickly.

[The Natural Philosopher]

+1 its probably not as 'off' as he thinks it is.

even so, charge retention on LIPOS whilst good, is not perfect. 6-9 months and all the 'fuel' is generally 'evaporated'

>

[Clive George]

Hibernate = fully off, just state saved to disk. You can remove the battery and power when it's hibernated without a problem.

Do you mean sleep?

[Paul - xxx]

Possibly .. ;)

[therustyone]

My Sony Viao VGN-FW21L is 3 years old and the battery still lasts about 3 days in sleep mode, and a few weeks when turned fully off. Never used hibernate mode much as it takes ages to boot up again.

rusty

[Stewart]

Thanks all, my son never uses hibernate or sleep; he knows how to fully switch off etc and is careful to do so. I think what annoys him most is that I have a much cheaper Acer laptop and the battery there works perfectly. My brother's problem I think was because he never used the battery but always "on mains power". Is LIPOS the type of cell used in these batteries? Thanks again.

[Martin Brown]

That is a great way to kill laptop batteries. I have done it to a Toshiba once when it was used continuously on mains for a while.

It is a good idea to cycle them to a decent level of discharge once every couple of months. Otherwise if kept continually at full charge for long periods of time they eventually protest by losing capacity. The replacement batteries tend to be annoyingly expensive too :(

Regards, Martin Brown

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I also use my Acer mainly on mains - and leave it plugged in and powered at the socket, but switched off at the laptop. After a couple of years the battery was knackered - despite hardly having been used in anger. I now remove the new one when not in use.

[Newshound]

I think some machines cope better with "continuous mains" than others. Three years without any sign of trouble on a heavily used "work" Dell Latitude, for example (better than either our Acer or Azus netbooks, which have both needed new batteries).

[Clive George]

I think the "work" bit might be part of it - my work HP one isn't doing too badly either at 4.5 years old, but it's a much better built machine than the domestic stuff.

[Andy Champ]

My work HP one has had a replacement battery after a couple of years. (definitely under 3)

It spends all day on the mains, but is usually unplugged when out of the office. It gets run flat occasionally.

Andy