Extra power for a laptop

Artashes

Administrator
Staff member
My laptop has a 6-cell battery, so it lasts about an hour an a half for working online and having other applications running on the background.

I am considering carrying some extra power with me, but I don't know what is a better solution: an extra battery (9/12 cell, if I manage to find one) or a portable general battery that I'd just plug my laptop into (like a power plug).

Anyone has any suggestions?

PS: How tricky is it to use an extra battery of higher cell volume? I heard it might damage the laptop... but not sure why.
 
I have always done 9 cell. I have two of them for my laptop. I haven't seen a general batter with a plug on it before. I would think the laptop batteries being made for them laptop would last longer then a general battery. The general pbattery probably is not setup to do that much power for that long.
 
I have 2 nine cells Art for a Dell Inspiron 9200.

They both have about a 4 hour capacity. Maybe even 4 and a half hours.

It's a 17" monitor so you could probably get better performance if the monitor is smaller.

I've been looking at upgrading my laptop lately and I don't see a lot out there that offers a longer battery life than what I have right now.

Actually, the last time I saw you in Montreal my two batteries pretty much covered the whole drive from PEI to Montreal because we were using the computer most of the way in the car for various reasons.
 
Actually, the last time I saw you in Montreal my two batteries pretty much covered the whole drive from PEI to Montreal because we were using the computer most of the way in the car for various reasons.

Did you have one of those Internet sticks from Bell, Rogers or Telus so early on, or Internet surfing/emailing wasn't part of the activities during the drive?


Thanks guys, I will try to see if there is a 9 cell battery for my laptop on ebay.
 
Artashes, iv got the same/similar problem mainly as I’m looking for a desktop replacement but still require a long battery life under constant use.

I’m currently looking at an Alienware m17 (quadcore 4gb ram 2xnvidea 280m's, 17" with 1tb hd (2x500)) though it was orriginally shipped with the option to buy additional batteries and also upgrade to a 12cell lith-ion.

not sure if everyone keeps up with dell's activities however but they purchased alienware a long time back being their main big competition for the xps range and shortly dell will be dropping this brand for the alienware brand however currently the only project shared by the two companies is this laptop as such they no longer offer the 12 cell upgrade (my business manger can’t seem to answer why) however the battery life on the standard 9 cell lith-ion will last between 5 and 9 hours dependant on the applications used on continual usage on the above spec.

so should offer the boost you need :)
 
Hey csn-uk, my laptop is not as monstrous as you are looking to get. Its a 13.3" screen and built for mobility obviously.

Core 2 Duo 1.83 GHz
2 GB ram

Enough for what I use the PC for - Internet-based work.

I believe in your case, you can't even consider anything below 9 cells. :) 12 cells will juice it up for the whole day worth of work!
 
So for a complete battery newbie that I am, I have a question.

Laptop:
Toshiba Satellite U400-DW3
Model: PSU40C-DW308C

I took the battery out, this is what it says:

Li-ion Battery Pack
Model NO. PA3634U-1BRS
DC 10.8V 3700mAh

I browsed the ebay and came across this listing:
http://cgi.ebay.ca/New-9-cell-Batte...in_2?hash=item58827b1b63&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

It doesn't really match completely, but it looks like its the same size. The difference is in last 3 letters:

PA3634U-1BRS
PA3634U-1BAS

It is a different cell battery after all... so perhaps the difference means just that?


EDIT: Oh man, just read online about mAh ratings, and apparently my laptop doesn't even qualify as 6-cell battery! It is 3700mAh, and 6-cell = 4400mAh...
 
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