One of the things which comes up from time to time is people saying “I don’t get as much battery life with this new OS as I used to … ” sometimes it is down to the configuration of the OS or its behaviour , but often it is due to the battery aging.
In Windows 7 the PowerCFG utility now sports a /energy switch, this will analyse your machine’s settings. (It needs to be run from an elevated command prompt) and on my Dell it warns me that some of the hardware devices might prevent the machine going to sleep, and that Windows can’t control the screen brightness to manage power.
More interesting though is the data towards the end of the report.
Battery:Battery Information
Battery ID 1997SMPDELL XY1234
Manufacturer: SMP
Serial Number: 1997
Chemistry: LION
Long Term :1
Design Capacity: 86580
Last Full Charge: 55178
Woah! Design capacity 86580 … it says on the battery that the life was 85 Watt Hours , so I’m guessing this is Milliwatt hours, and the last full charge was only 55 Watt hours ? So my battery held 50% more when new ? I pinched this battery out of another laptop because when the original was 14 months old, and was getting about 30 minutes run time (batteries only get a 1 year warranty, and a new batteries are eye wateringly expensive) – it has had less than a year of active use – although it’s more than year old, so again out of warranty cover.
I’d be fascinated to know what numbers other people get.
Interesting... here is my info (fairly new Lenovo T61p)
Battery ID 2662Panasonic92P1139
Manufacturer Panasonic
Serial Number 2662
Chemistry LION
Long Term 1
Design Capacity 56160
Last Full Charge 54140
here's mine from my 2 month old asus 1000ha:
Battery ID ASUS1000H
Manufacturer ASUS
Serial Number
Design Capacity 55272
Last Full Charge 54877
On a Thinkpad T61P purchased last summer,
Battery ID 1019Panasonic92P1133
Serial Number 1019
Design Capacity 84240
Last Full Charge 78680
Battery ID 06901 2008/07/07Hewlett-PackardPrimary
Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard
Serial Number 06901 2008/07/07
Chemistry LIon
Design Capacity 66830
Last Full Charge 66830
7 months old HP8510w
wow top score!
Battery ID 01824 2008/10/30Hewlett-PackardPrimary
Serial Number 01824 2008/10/30
Design Capacity 69178
Last Full Charge 69178
See, I'm now tempted to load up Windows 7 just to run this report - my 3 year old Tosh M400 gives me around 4 minutes of battery life !
Samsung NC10
Battery ID SAMSUNG Electronics
Manufacturer SAMSUNG Electronics
Design Capacity 57720
Last Full Charge 54390
oh dear!
18 month old Dell Vostro:
Battery ID 2786SanyoDELLJN1497
Manufacturer Sanyo
Serial Number 2786
Design Capacity 95460
Last Full Charge 60151
And I thought I was still getting good uptime from the battery!
18 month old Lenovo T60
Battery ID 1560Panasonic92P1133
Serial Number 1560
Last Full Charge 67450
brand new, out of the box Lenovo W500
Battery ID 252Panasonic42T4620
Serial Number 252
Last Full Charge 80510