Laptop batteries are like people--eventually and inevitably, they die. And like people, they don't obey Moore's Law--You can't expect next year'sreplacement Latitude E6500 battery to last twice as long as this year's.
Battery technology may improve a bit over time (after all, there's plenty of financial incentive for better batteries), but, while interesting possibilities may
pop up, don't expect major battery breakthroughs in the near future.
Although your battery will eventually die, proper care can put off the inevitable. Here's how to keep your laptop battery working for as long as possible. With luck, it could
last until you need to replace that aging notebook (perhaps with a laptop having a longer battery life).
I've also included a few tips on keeping the battery going longer between charges, so you can work longer without AC power.
Squeezing every drop of juice out of a lithium ion battery (the type used in today's laptops) strains and weakens it. Doing this once or twice won't kill the battery, but the
cumulative effect of frequently emptying your battery will shorten its lifespan.
(There's actually an exception to this rule--a circumstance where you should run down the battery all the way. I'll get to that later.)
The good news: You probably can't run down the battery, anyway--at least not without going to a lot of trouble to do so. Most modern laptops arereplacement Studio 1537 batteries designed to shut down before the
battery is empty.
In fact, Vista and Windows 7 come with a setting for just this purpose. To see it, click Start, type power, and select Power Options. Click any one of the Change plan settings
links, then the Change advanced power settings link. In the resulting dialog box, scroll down to and expand the Battery option. Then expand Critical battery level. The setting
will probably be about 5 percent, which is a good place to leave it.
XP has no such native setting, although your laptop may have a vendor-supplied tool that does the same job.