Laptop Battery

[Falcon2004]

hi

Just bought a laptop off a friend for a reasonable price, however, part of the sale agreement was that i would need to byu a new battery cos the current one only lasts around 20 minutes (!) anyway, its got windows XP home installed on it. I was wondering what settings i should change to get the power to alst as logn as possible (it my first laptop) and also, can anyone source a replacement for the current battery. All i can find out about it is that its a 34BS1, the chemistry is "lilo" and its an OEM.

Any help appreciated
Falcon

[Stubzz]

Which CPU is it? I know mobile AMD chips can be tweked bt a program called SpeedSwitch.
Some ways to conserve as much power as possible:
* lower CPU clock rate
* lower graphics performance (if applicable)
* turn off cdrom/floppy/pcmcia devices
* lower screen brightness

Basically turning off anything that isn't needed.

Whats the exact make and model of the laptop, will make finding batter replacements easier.

[Falcon2004]

unfortunatly its a normal P4 2.66Ghz, not a P4M. How do i lower cpu clock rate? you mean from the BIOS? graphics is allready on minumum and the DVD/CD-RW combo is off. is there any pecial windows setitng i can change to cut power usage?

[Stubzz]

Normally whenever running off the battery the clock speed is automatically reduced. But I dunno about normal P4's (won't they still be multiplier locked?). I've got a XP-M and I use a seperate program to control the speed of the CPU there should be one for the P4 as well

edit: It called SpeedStep, just need to find a decent link

[Stubzz]

Well, the prog I use (SpeedSwitchXP works for Intel CPU's too

However if you're CPU doesn't support speedstep then thats not going to work. Which would mean your only options are under the Power Options control panel applet.

[Falcon2004]

ok, thanks anyone know about the battery?

[Merlin]

What make and model is the laptop? If we knew that we could help you find a battery.

[Falcon2004]

The manufacturer is Patriot. couldnt tell you the model. but i can tell you the specs (if that helps) Its a P4 2.66 with 256Mb ram (64MB shared with gfx) 20gb HDD, DVDCD-RW conbo and all the trimmings (usb, ethernet, modem etc)

Falcon

[Stubzz]

Patriot is Pc World's own brand IIRC, they might be able to help you find one

[[GSV]Trig]

I get all my laptop batteries from these people, v good

http://powerup.computerbatteries.co.uk/

[RVF500]

One thing I learned from using laptops constantly is that the batteries reduce their functionality as they get older until they simply don't work. It's just fact of life with laptops. I got roughly a year out of a battery depending on the usage. Though for a significant amount of that time the performance of the battery was pretty poor.

This reduction in functionality is a 'memory' characteristic that exists with NiCad type products ( I know laptop batteries aren't NiCad). If a battery is recharged before it is fully discharged it retains a 'memory' of where it was when it went back on charge and will only run down to that point after a while. It's not a hard and fast level but something that will occur over time.

One way to prolong battery life is to fully discharge them once in use before hooking up a power supply to charge them back up. I leave my batteries out of the case and just work on the power supply until I am in a position in which I need to use the battery. Doing this the battery on my current laptop still has a couple of hours life in it after almost a year this time around.