Battery life question

I have an Aspire One A150 which I use now and then. Today I traveled one and half hour in a bus so naturally I took the laptop with me. However I could only use it for about 25 minutes before the battery was dry, I had charged it to 100% a few days earlier. I used it to play SimCity 3000 for about 5 minutes and extracted two somewhat large zip files, other than those it was just very light use for the rest of the 25 minutes.

Is the battery life really that short if you do anything else than very light use? Or should I always charge the battery to 100% just before I left for a trip (now it laid inside the laptop fully charged for a few days). Or is the battery just dying?

 

The battery doesn't reach full capacity before you use it a couple times.

 

Well I've had the laptop since late 2008 and the battery has seen more than a couple recharges. Oh well, I'll stress test the battery today and see how it fairs.

 

I have noticed myself that both the 3 and 6 cell battery of my One seem to lose their charge pretty quickly when not used.. Just a few days after full charge the capasity has dropped by tens of percents.

I haven't done any real tests on this, might just be my imagination, but ...

 

The battery must have lost most of its charge before you started using the computer. Even the 3-cell should last 1.5 hours under heavy use. Are you sure you turned the laptop off and didn't just put it into sleep mode? My battery also looses some of its charge over time, but it's only a matter of a few percent, not 2/3 of the charge in a few days...

If you're going to use the laptop on battery the next day, just leave it to charge overnight.

If you know you're not going to be using the battery for a while (a week or more maybe), let the battery drain to about a 40% charge and then remove the battery and store it in a cool place (I keep my spare 3-cell battery in the fridge).