Re: Laptop battery
On Sat, 18 Feb 2006 04:51 am, john gennard wrote:
>----> Just before Christmas, I bought a secondhand T20
>----> Laptop and installed Sarge which works fine.
>---->
>----> The vendor said there was a battery which 'worked
>----> well'. Embarrassingly, I have so far always used the T20
>----> with the AC Adapter. However, last evening I decided to
>----> use the battery to see how much time I would get from it.
>---->
>----> Debian's monitor told me the battery was fully
>----> charged, but, on starting I got a message 'Running off
>----> Battery - 11 minutes left', two minutes later
>----> 'Battery running out 0 minutes left'. It did give me
>----> enough time to close everything and shut down.
>---->
>----> I've just recharged the battery which took just
>----> over 23 minutes to reach 'fully charged'. Then switching
>----> to it, in one minute I got 'Running off battery 11 mins
>----> left' quickly followed by 'running out 0 mins left'.
>---->
>----> It would seem that I've been 'sold a pup', but
>----> before getting a new one (assuming one can be found), I
>----> just wondered if anything in the Debian software could be
>----> misconfigured. The battery itself seems in almost pristine
>----> condition to my inexperienced eyes.
>---->
>----> Can anyone offer any suggestions (solice is perhaps
>----> too much to hope for). I've never had anything to do with
>----> Laptops before, so I'm in the dark.
>---->
>----> Regards, John.
Having never used my lappy with battery on Debian, this might not be relevant.
However, just in case it is.
On Windows 3.1 in the days of yore, and more recently with XP I have used the
lappy battery many times. Have found that a battery lasts quite a few years.
But I have always run then down on every use.
In 3.1 and XP I use the battery till the battery low, warning comes up, and
then a little longer.
Saving my work often.
Then shut down all programs, and open a game. Solitaire is good. This is the
only app running and I play till the battery is completely empty and drops
everything out. That empties the battery completely, but it means that on
booting again, the filesystem needs to be recovered. XP does this well,
probably being accustomed to crashes? I am not certain that an ext3 system
will do as well. Though can't understand why it wouldn't. I have found that
it does so after power outages [which in previous times we have experienced
many, before getting solar power] without any problems.
Depending on how you feel, I would try to run the battery out to test the
veracity of the reading you're getting. Like much in life, it is a matter of
suck it and see.
Emptying the battery stops it from getting a memory and usually means that it
can be used for much more than the 500 recharges that the computer
manufacturer suggests. YMMV
HTH
--
Registered Linux User:- 329524
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