PCA Forums

My 1.5 yr old laptops battery has died. I knew it was going, losing its charge holding abilty but now the lappy battery indicator LED shows nothing and if unplugged to move while on, the thing shuts off.
Probably a normal lifespan for a laptop battery? Good thing I found one via pricewatch for about 1/2 of what Toshiba sells them for (ouch!).

Well what kind of battery was it, NiCd, NiMH, or Li-Ion? I know Lithium Ion last a pretty good while Ive seen them go a long time without fail, but like the NiMH they only have like 300-500 charge/discharge cycles.
But the NiMH tend to cut out alot quicker. And NiCd builds up a "memory" problem (a crystalline formation) if not regularly discharged when in use. This feature is apparent if the NiCd battery is continually "topped up". Reduction of the "memory" is achieved by the discharging of the battery.


I Had a Gateway Solo laptop that came with a NiMH and the stupid thing only kept a charge for like 30 mins on low use, and died after 9 months, gateway was like "that's normal" and I was like you suck.

Normal life for a laptop battery is 2 - 3 years. Trouble is that quality control and other factors vary wildly.

I've seen laptop batteries go sour in 6 months, some last as long as 4 years.

Good source for batteries here: http://laptopsforless.com

Well, my old P200MMX laptop's battery is still alive after 5, going on 6 years of use. It only holds a charge for about an hour (was originally two) but I haven't been able to find my "gas guage" program for it that you're supposed to use every 6 months, according to my lappy manuf. to keep the battery going well. So I guess I'm just lucky.. heh.. eGo

It's a Lithium Ion type battery and it's not really completely dead now afterall (re-seated it, back to life) but its useable life span has decreased over time from 2 hours to about ~1/2 hour now. The battery indicator will show that it's got 2 hours remaining after being fully charged, then I'll soon see the indicator dropped off to being very low and soon after that, it's alarm is beeping.

I've always assumed that it's best to not leave the laptop plugged in once the battery is charged to avoid over-heating, over-charging the battery. True?
I also know that many re-chargeable batteries have "memory" so that it's then best to go from fully charged to needing a charge w/o re-charging in between unless one's using it for hours with the power plugged in.

You can't overcharge/overheat a modern laptop battery. Charging circuits are more sophisticated now and batteries have "brains".

So then, basically forget about it and don't even think about the battery? I could live with that