On Tuesday 05 August 2003 22:14, Paul Tansom wrote:
is 3-400 cycles typical with a laptop battery? I've been told this by Dell now that my two batteries have given up and was quite disgusted. Traditional Lithium Ion batteries are quoted at around 1000 cycles iirc. That's not a particularly good value for money when a battery costs around 77 quid plus VAT and delivery for my Dell (or about 249 quid I've seen quoted for for one). That's not cheap to keep my laptop going when I have to buy a new one each year - on current evidence. That coupled with the fragility of the power connector for the charger has put me right off Dell kit which I always used to think highly of (oh, and an increasingly dodgy connection to the screen).
Seems pretty typical in my experience.
The 1000 cycle thing is assuming ideal circumstances. Things like current drawn and the operating temperature of the Battery can effect the assumed life of any battery technology, as does the design of the charger.
For example in my youth I used to race scale model radio controlled cars, your batteries could win or lose you a race so serious competitors bought the very best and matched the cells carefully. If I got 30 races out of a £50 pack I thought I was doing well. But then the batteries were being used under harsh conditions (heat and charge/discharge rate) and at the time we were only allowed to use NiCd technology.
As to Dell laptops, I too am rarely impressed by them. The price/performance ratio isn't too bad but IMO the build quality of the machines leaves a lot to be desired. In my previous job we had a pool of 10 Inspiron A400's, after 18 months the only one working properly was the one I completely rebuilt after a Coke spill. It was not unusual for me to have to go around every 6 months tightening case screws that were nearly falling out, replacing floppy screen hinges, dead batteries, broken keyboards.
IMO Sony's aren't too bad, Toshiba's are good, Compaq/HP have improved a great deal and are currently my favourite, Thinkpads (apart from the Acer built ones) are king (at least for X86 laptops anyway).
Mail me off list if you want as I can get Laptop spares and I may be able to source you a new screen connector (depending on the model it's reasonably easy to fit)