As anyone will attest to, laptop batteries are the most problematic part of the laptop computer. If your battery is not up to par and will not hold a charge, your laptop becomes a desktop and is no longer as portable as it should be.
Laptop batteries are rated by both voltage and milliamp hours. The voltage is the measure of the amount at which energy is withdrawn from the battery, and the milliamp hours is the amount of time the battery will last with a full charge.
Batteries may be interchanged within laptops as long as the voltage is the same. You cannot interchange batteries with different voltages. Attempting this could do some major damage to your laptop. The milliamp hours rating does not matter when it comes to exchanging batteries from laptop to laptop.
The amount of time that a battery will last on a particular laptop will vary. Every laptop will draw a different amount of power to operate. The battery time will also depend on the amount of applications being used, like games, graphics or saving things to the memory. No matter what the rating says on the battery for the milliamp hours, you can realistically expect one and a half to three hours of operating time from a battery that is working properly. One of the biggest drains on a battery, which most people don’t realize, is the wireless adapter.
The average life of laptop batteries is about 600 to 900 charge-recharge cycles. This should be about one and a half to two and a half years. As the battery begins to fail, you will notice that the run time of the battery begins to get shorter and shorter.
Most of the batteries that come with a laptop upon purchase come in a discharged state. The best way to break in a battery and assure yourself that it will give you the longest life is to charge and discharge. In other words, you should put the battery into the laptop and let it charge fully, and then operate the laptop on the battery until it fully discharges and dies. After you do this, recharge the battery fully and you are ready to go. This process, if you perform it as stated, will make your battery last as long as it possibly can.
Just remember these simple things about laptop batteries and you will always get the most out of your battery investment.
