Help Documents
Battery Life
The following information was taken directly from Dell's website.
Factors That Affect Battery Life
Factors that contribute to draining battery charge are:
Processor speed - Intel® SpeedStep® will extend battery life on applicable systems
CD, DVD, CD-RW and hard drive access frequency - Try moving files and applications directly to the hard drive.
Amount of video and main memory - Depends on usage. More memory will help if several apps are open to limit use of the swap file.
Applications that are active, as well as running in the background - Run only what is necessary.
LCD brightness - Lower the brightness as far as is tolerable.
Power management and SpeedStep settings - Set power management as low as is comfortable.
The age of the battery - A battery's average life expectancy is 1 year. After this time, it is normal to experience a decrease in battery life.
Applications that cause intensive use of the system processor and drives (such as playing a DVD movie and 3D games) can more than halve the amount of time that the system can be used on battery.
NOTE: Product batteries for portable computers are covered only during the initial one-year period of this limited warranty.
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Battery Life Expectancy
The 8-cell battery should last about 2 hours and the 4-cell should last about 1 hour if you use a single application with regular portable settings. With all of the factors listed above causing the maximum power drain, it is possible for the 8-cell battery to last less than an hour and the 4-cell to last less than 30 minutes. This does not indicate that the battery is going bad.
To watch a DVD movie, use AC adapter power to ensure power to the computer lasts as long as the movie.
