We just bought a new battery for my wife's laptop. The standard, OEM battery was a 6-cell and on eBay I found a 12-cell battery that claimed 10,500 mAh (I think that's the number) for $20.00. One of those "If it sounds too good to be true..." type of moments. I confess. I was weak. I paid that $20.00 and bought that cheap battery hoping to get something for nothing.
Anyways it showed up incredibly fast (2 days, priority mail, which I didn't ask for or pay for) and it fits perfectly. Super large it causes the laptop to slant forward now because it's almost twice as thick as the previous, factory battery.
So far I've done 2 full, 100% charge, @ 3% discharge cycles (until the computer just switches off) and now I realize I have no objective way to measure how many hours of "life" the laptop gets, due to all the various power savings mechanisms involved (screen turning off, hard drive turning off, hibernate, standby, etc...)
Other than manually turning everything ON and making a big deal about force-testing battery A, comparing it to battery B, etc... is there an easy way to get a good, workable idea of how much "life" each battery gives? I want to say "This battery is good for 4 hours, and this one is good for 8 hours." or something along those lines.
Is there a downloadable, freeware utility that "tracks" power consumption and battery life? It's Win7, so a "gadget" would be ideal.
Anyways it showed up incredibly fast (2 days, priority mail, which I didn't ask for or pay for) and it fits perfectly. Super large it causes the laptop to slant forward now because it's almost twice as thick as the previous, factory battery.
So far I've done 2 full, 100% charge, @ 3% discharge cycles (until the computer just switches off) and now I realize I have no objective way to measure how many hours of "life" the laptop gets, due to all the various power savings mechanisms involved (screen turning off, hard drive turning off, hibernate, standby, etc...)
Other than manually turning everything ON and making a big deal about force-testing battery A, comparing it to battery B, etc... is there an easy way to get a good, workable idea of how much "life" each battery gives? I want to say "This battery is good for 4 hours, and this one is good for 8 hours." or something along those lines.
Is there a downloadable, freeware utility that "tracks" power consumption and battery life? It's Win7, so a "gadget" would be ideal.
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