I have a KDS laptop, about a year old. Most of the time when I use it it’s plugged in, but occasionaly I have to run it off the battery. The problem is that even when the battery reagisters as “fully charged”, it dosen’t last for much more than an hour of use. Is this normal? Is there a way to get power for a longer span of time? One hour is pretty useless if I want to watch a movie on an airplane, for example.
Your laptop should have some sort of power saving program which you can use to set what to run at certain times. When you are watching a movie on an airplane you probably can let your hard drive spin down, etc. which will help to greatly reduce power consumption.
It’s possible that you have a (slightly) bad battery. However, my Toshiba laptop of a similar age can only get 2 hours max, and that’s only if I don’t do anything but play Solitaire. Unfortunately-short battery times are all too common, I’m afraid.
An hour is pretty good for an old battery. But, if you want to try for more, run the laptop’s “battery learning program”. Check with the maker’s web site for more info. (KDS probably sells someone else’s laptop under their label. Try finding out who really made it for even more info.)
If it doesn’t have one, and it’s a NiMH, charge it up. Turn off all power saving, including in the BIOS. Let it run till it shuts off. Recharge, repeat a couple more times.
If it’s a LIon, I’m not sure if there’s more that could be done.
I’ve got a KDS Valiant 6480, and the battery has always sucked. In fact, it shit the bed completely about six months ago. And the AC adapter is slowly dying.
Other than that, and the terrible screen, it’s run like a champ for almost three years. Cheap as hell, and runs Linux perfectly, too.
Anyway, it’s normal. KDS uses the cheapest components possible, including batteries.