Peter,

That really stinks. I imagine a replacement is pretty expensive, they
usually are :-(.

Li-Ion batteries are much better than the previous generation of batteries,
like Nickel-Metal-Hydride (NiMh), or nickel-cadmium (NiCd), so it seems
unusually short of a lifespan of only 18 months. NiCd suffered terribly
from a "memory" effect, where you needed to run them completely down before
recharging, or it "learned" a shorter charge capacity. NiMh did not have
this problem as bad as NiCd. Li-Ion are supposed to be pretty good. It
depends on the usage pattern. They are usually rated for a minimum of 500
charge/discharge cycles, how often does your daughter use the laptop on
battery power?

Another thing may be the way the power control settings are setup, the
running time of a fully charged battery depends a lot on the computer being
idlesome, being able to spin down the hard disk periodically, the backlight
turning off when idle, etc. If any of the power settings are changed such
that it can't enter any of these idle states, the running time will be
greatly shortened.

If it is the battery, one thing to do in the future to preserve life is to
run it with the power code attached whenever possible, this reduces the
number of charge/discharge cycles, which should help extend its life.

At 04:35 PM 1/24/2005, you wrote:
>My daughter has an Averatec 3150H laptop. The computer is about a year and a
>half old - has been repaired twice. Now the battery seems to last only about
>30 minutes per charge. I suspect that the battery is starting to fail.
>
>How long a lifetime do the laptops have? This one uses a 12.6 volt, 4000 mAh
>Lithium-ion battery.
>
>Thank you for any experiences you can share.

Russ Poffenberger
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