Clem,
Vicki's suggestions are good for maximizing usage.
Sounds like your battery has lost a little of it's
original lifespan which is not abnormal for an older
battery.
Off the top of my head, I'd guesstimate that you
probably had more like 2 hours when it was new.
I'm a firm believer in cycle charging to restore lost
battery life. Back when I used to repair Toshiba
laptops, we cycle charged batteries all the time to
restore them for owners. Granted, this started with
NiCd batteries. Then the NiMh came out and everyone
was like "Oh, no memory problems..." wrong. Cycle
charging kept those up just as well. With Li
batteries, there really is minimal memory problems,
and, although I've heard some people say not to cycle
charge Li batteries, I still do. I've restored
battery life to friends batteries for them, even
restored life on my Dad's Wallstreet to 1 hour from a
totally dead battery that wouldn't even give him a
minute. Granted, that was an extreme circumstance and
took some coaxing, but it beat buing a new one ;-)
All of the batteries in all of my laptops at home give
me at least 2 hours of runtime. (I have 6 laptops at
home IBM and Mac) This includes a PB3400 with the
original battery that I still get 2 1/2 hours from.
Remember that with laptop batteries, the more you use
them, the better they will last. If you always keep
your laptop plugged in and never run it off the
battery... then, 6 months later you run it off the
battery for the first time, you may very well find
that it only holds a charge for 1 hour. I routinely
run my batteries completely dead and recharge them at
least once every two weeks and recommend the same to
anyone else.
This email is getting long enough for now ;-) If you
don't know how to cycle charge a battery, let me know
and I'll email you the steps.
Oh, and my thoughts on battery reconditioning
software... personally, other than to play with it
and see how it works, I've never used it. I have
friends that use it, and they don't get as good
results with their batteries as I get with mine...
Sionnach
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