Laptop Battery

[tekmac]

I have an acer laptop and it has crap battery, so I was wondering would it be dangerous to replace the default battery with one, with more capacity?

 

[johnlgalt]

Depends upon what Acer says, as well as the qualit of ht battery you're looking at. Word to the wise - there have been a lot of 'fake' batteries being sold on sites like eBay and the like, so be careful about what you buy.

Also, I know that some older Compaq / HP laptops had the capability to run through a battery conditioning stage that took several hours to perform, did that with an older Compaq that "had a dead battery" and revived it to work almost within original specifications. Might want to look into this with your laptop as well.

 

[tekmac]

Ok so I should contact Acer because their page is no help? and i'll try to see a conditioning stage. Its because my laptop only has 2 hours.

 

[johnlgalt]

2 hours is not all that bad, considering various factors....

1) Age of the laptop (and particularly the battery)

2) Number of active programs running when using the laptop

3) amount of time you actively use the laptop in that 2 hours period

4) Peripherals - things like USB drives (particularly those not powered on their own), cameras, etc. that you have running all the time that obtain power via the USB port will drain your battery a lot faster.

5) OS - believe it or not, OS makes a huge difference. If you're running Windows 7, good, it is a heck of a lot more resource friendly than Vista ever was - and I am a big fan of Vista over XP simply because of the sheer volume of protection you need when running XP without taking unusual steps like running as a Limited User on a daily basis...)

6) Hardware settings for battery mode and OS settings for battery mode - things like downclocking the CPU and dimming the screen when using battery will help prolong battery life b/c they simply use less processing power, although a lot of these settings will also be tied directly to #3 as well - downclocking can be forced (IOW, run a lower clock speed when on battery always or it can be more like a SpeedStep - downclock when idle - but if you ahve a program that is always running actively (think game, background AV scanning, defragmenting, etc.) and it downclocks only when idle, well, with that program running all the time it never goes idle, and thus never downclocks.....

Let's start with some basic info, laptop model, OS, and configuration (HD size, RAM, etc.) an go from there.

Of course, you're welcome to call Acer if you'd like, I do agree that their cust serv could use a bit of help online, but I am satisfied with my dual 22" monitors from Acer, so...never really had the need to call them.

 

[tekmac]

Ok i have windows 7 64 bit, it lasts two hours while surfing on chrome. Its a lower end laptop its called the acer 5532. The processor is an amd athlon TF-20 with 1.6 GHz. The RAM is 3 GB with 2.75 usable. The HDD is 160 GB.

 

[johnlgalt]

Which Windows 7 64bit - Ultimate, Home Premium, Professional...

Are you surfing continuously? Are you on a wireless connection while surfing? Is this continuous surfing? How close are you to your access point?

 

[tekmac]

This is premium, and its continuous surfing maybe once or twice i will take a five minute break and this is continuously connected about 8 feet away from the access point.

 

[johnlgalt]

OK, that might not be far from what it is supposed to give you then. after all, you're continuously using power, screen brightness is always up b/c of the activity, and you're actively using the WiFi as well.

Still, look into if there is a way to recondition the battery. Also, you might go to the downloads section and see if you have any updates, like drivers and such, that will make things run smoother. Another idea is to look and see if you have the latest BIOS< and if not, if the latest BIOS (or any between the revision that you have installed and the latest one) specifically mentions something along the lines of 'more efficient battery usage' or fixes for things like standby / hibernate / low power fixes.

 

[tekmac]

How would i update the bios?

 

[johnlgalt]

download the file from Acer's website, then follow the instructions.

 

[tanker12]

I just bought a replacement battery in the website: pcbatteria.com ,and I also have a crap battery now.

 

[Rukbat]

Everything johnlgalt says is true. However, to answer your original question:

As long as the voltage of the replacement battery is the same as that of the original battery, the battery won't damage the laptop. Using a battery with more capacity (amps or miliamps) will give you more run time. But using an inferior quality battery could lead to less run time and even a fire. Buying a battery from Acer not only assures you that you're probably getting quality, it keeps the warranty in effect - if the battery damages (or burns up) the laptop, Acer is responsible. But buying a battery from a reputable battery builder will probably ensure that you get quality also.

Still, you can't cram too much more power into the battery case than the original battery. You might be able to get as much as double the power (it depends on how full, and with what, the original battery case is) - if you're willing to spend a lot more than Acer will charge you for a replacement of the same capacity as the original. But until the new Lithium technology hits the market (maybe 5 years or so), what comes with laptops is about the most that can come in that size package.