Normal battery wear

[alison]

How do I know if my battery life is going down faster than it should? I have only had my T42 for a month. During that time it seems that my battery now lasts about 1 hour less than when I first got it. Is that normal? I have only used my computer for about 2 week (vacation). Thanks.

[dr_st]

Perhaps it needs recalibration. Try the battery maximizing wizard and run reconditioning on the battery.

[turbolium]

One other thing
If you install bunch of new software and got more processes, etc
this can couse your cpu to work more and drain the battary + depends how you use it

[davidspalding]

Alison are you using the same power scheme in Power Manager? If in doubt, I like the Power Source Optimized one. Its a nice balance of save the battery and max the performance on AC.

Or ... if you're like me ... you can tweak it a bit and save it as your own customized scheme.

Then you can do the recalibration, which is said to fine tune the "amount remaining" accuracy. Don't do this more than a few times a year, as the recalibration process performs a "deep discharge" of the battery, which takes a toll on LiIon battery lifetime.

[edited with additional caveat]

[Domain]

I'd avoid the reset/recalibration if you can. Play with the power scheme settings a bit as said before. The reset/recalibration can cause some heavy wear on your battery. Be careful.

[davidspalding]

I dunno about heavy wear, but the recalib' does perform a deep discharge, which -- you're right -- can take a toll on a battery if done regularly. I'd suggest doing the recalibration no more than 3-4 times a year. (And I'll edit my previous post to reflect this. Thanks.)