Why is my battery life running out so fast in my laptop?

Question

I have a Fujitsu Siemens v5535 Esprimo Mobile. The battery drains fast even though I just bought a new one. What could this be attributed to?

Answer 1

As Josh said, battery life on a laptop is directly related to the tasks you're performing. While it's possible you got a "dud" battery, watching movies, playing graphics-intensive games, decoding the human genome, and keeping your screen on full brightness for a long period of time can all drain your battery quickly. The biggest offenders would probably be graphics-related.

Edit: It's very appropriate that this article came up on Lifehacker today: http://lifehacker.com/5566020/how-to-maximize-the-battery-life-of-your-windows-laptop

Based on that article, the LCD screen is the biggest drain, and your brightness settings can have a lot to do with overall life.

Answer 2

First you would have to define "fast" as a unit of time. Preferably standard hours / minutes / seconds.

Second take into account various things that put strain on the battery. Wi-Fi, bluetooth, screen brightness, activity, hard drives, disc drives, cpu intensive operations. What are you doing when your battery drains "fast?"

Answer 3

Did you do a full charge on the Laptop when you purchased it before using it without the charger plugged in?

Answer 4

Something as said by the colleagues, but it depends on:
1. how much programs are running (also backgroud processes)
2. how many hardware is functional
3. the capacity of your battery (how much Ah, Ampères-hour, it have; 4-cell, 6-cell)
4. how old is your battery and how do you charge it
5. the default hardware of your notebook

Suggestions:
1. Well, if you are using Windows, you need to know that some SO processes related to visual effects (like Aero and Sidebar) demand some power. Try one of these solutions:
- MS solution: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/tamir/archive/2007/05/14/Vista-Battery-Saver.aspx
- Manual solution: Windows 7 Aero Theme when on Battery and try the solution

1.1. If the battery performance does not get better, try to kill more processes, like Google Desktop/Sidebar, antivirus etc.; maintain only fundamental processes. Use ProcessExplorer from http://sysinternals.com to identify and kill unnecessary processes. If you are an advanced user and want to remove some processes from startup, use Autoruns (download from same site)

1.2. If you are using Linux, I think you will know to do that easily :p

1. Try to turn off webcam and other peripherals

2. If your battery does not changed performance since you bought it, pehaps you have purchased a battery with a low capacity. Well, compare how much Ah or cells it have and try to buy a better one

3. Charge battery as said in manuals. I heard that Li-Ion batteries must not be totally empty as Ni-MH to do not turn one with memory effect. If you try and cannot charge the battery, discard it and buy another

4. Well, the best solution in that case is to sell yours and buy another XD

Answer 5

Did you buy this "new" battery from a reputable retailer, or some dodgy seller on ebay? The fact that you are asking here rather than just taking it back to the shop suggests the latter.

If that's the case, it's probably a cheap 3rd party knockoff part and you get what you pay for I'm afraid.

Answer 6

Do you have anything running on the USB ports that needs alot of power? If I plug my phone in to a usb port with the laptop running on its battery, the battery is usually dead in less than an hour. Also, if your running Windows, you can go in to "Power Options" in Control Panel and try changing it to either "Balanced" or "Power saver" (not sure if they're different on XP and Vista).

Answer 7

Sometimes it may not cause completely because of apps/programs you run. It may be a 100% battery or hardware related problem. Since you have brand new laptop, ask the reseller to replace it or pack it up for warranty. Rare cases are there about hardware malfunctioning in brand new gadgets.