Does this seem correct?

[sporkme]

I really like BatteryBar Pro. I recently bought a new high-capacity battery and I am getting some disappointing statistics.

I bought THIS battery a few days ago.

BatteryBar reported inconsistent capacity ratings. Time remaining on the power saving setting would suddenly jump from 120 minutes to 10 minutes, then momentarily back up to 35 minutes, then back down to critical. I have not measured actual runtime but I know it was not the 4+ hours I should be getting. I figured that the battery minder circuit was out of whack, so I let it run to hibernate, then booted to BIOS configuration and let it run until it died naturally. When I booted back up to windows, I got this:



Could crash diving the battery like that really have caused the minder to up the wear factor to 17.6%? Do the other statistics seem likely? Should I request warranty on this battery, or should I try something else first?

Thanks for your advice, glad I bought.

[Chris]

Non-OEM batteries are notorious for not providing reliable statistics. The idea that it can hold 156Wh is pretty ridiculous.

My advice? I would turn off the computer and charge the battery to 100%, then boot up the computer with Windows and BatteryBar running and allow the battery to discharge to a normal level of 10% or so. You can use the computer during the time. This will allow BatteryBar to capture the data about the battery. You may also want to manually track how long the battery lasts from 100% to 10%.

If you are using the Pro version, there's an option under "Tools" in Preferences to enable battery status logging. That'll generate a file you can open in Excel and see the detailed data on the battery status as is discharges.

After you do a discharge, plug in the power and allow it to recharge, again with BatteryBar still running. Once that's complete, open the Battery Profile Graph to see how long BatteryBar things the battery should last based on the discharge/recharge cycle.

What you should be looking for are sudden changes in percent, such as suddenly jumping from 100% to 90% or from 40% to 10%. Those jumps will indicate a bad battery.

[sporkme]

Thank you. I am using the pro version. I will let it build up some stats.