I plan on buying my first laptop sometime in the next week or so. I have one question based on something someone said in a thread last month:
When you get a laptop are the different kinds of batteries different shapes or otherwise configured differently from each other somehow, or could you at a later date upgrade from a 4 or 6 cell battery to the nine cell battery Rico’s friend seems to have? Basically, I’d like to know if you’re stuck with whatever size battery you start with.
The batteries in Dell laptops (I won’t vouch for other makes because we’ve been dealing solely with Dell at work for years now) are removable. You can upgrade your battery at a later date if you wish. You have to purchase a compatible battery of course, but these are available through Dell for their range of laptops. So if you find that the standard battery is not enough for you, you can order either an additional standard battery and swap them when one drains or you can order the larger capacity battery.
I will eventually order a larger battery for my laptop. My regret was that I didn’t order it when I bought the laptop. If you do it that way you can save usually over 50%.
In my case, an upgrade would have cost $130.00. Now when I buy my next battery it will be $299.00
The battery on my Gateway laptop, which I bought almost two years ago, is good for about three hours. I don’t remember given a choice of batteries, and have never checked to see if a battery good for longer is available. I am however, thinking about swapping my 512Mb RAM for 1Gb.
Apropos of little to the actual question in the OP:
NajaHusband has a Dell laptop that’s a couple years old, and found that his battery stopped holding a charge a few months ago. He hadn’t gotten around to replacing the battery when the adapter died.
In doing a little nosing around for a replacement, he found out that it’s a common issue with this particular model–evidently a lot of people complain about having to constantly replace it, and that the first sign of failure is a battery that quickly loses charge. It’s a good thing he got lazy about replacing the battery, since a replacement adapter ran $40, while the battery would have been steep.
It obviously depends on the manufacturer, but Dell usually produces multiple battery options for their laptops. At the low end (usually the default option) is a fairly lame battery that’s will keep the laptop running for a brief while (about 45 minutes for one particularly budget Dell that I’ve seen). This battery is junk, sold just to keep the initial price of the laptop down as low as possible. Upgrade it if at all possible when buying the laptop. Otherwise you’ll just end up throwing it out in a few months when you get tired of always have to look for outlets.
Get 2Gb while you are on with it, not much more outlay.
My Tosh is >a year old and the battery was good for three hours at first, down to about 45 minutes now. It HAS been well cared for. I bought four and all are the same.
Ed. to clarify - four identical Tosh laptops, all with the same battery type in them, not four batteries.