We have a HP laptop that is 20 months old, the battery has died. My wife was using it at the time and she said she heard a faint pop noise. Should a genuine laptop battery last this short a period. It only gets light use and most of the time is running plugged in.

Their seems to be a good range of non genuine replacment batteries out their can they really be any worse than the original. Anyone recomend somewhere to buy one from.

Isn’t the problem here that you were essentially charging a rechargeable battery continually? I thought that they liked to be charged and discharged regularly.

Mine went on the blink after a similar period of time and when it was on its last legs it kept making switching the mains circuit breaker.

our dell went the same way, i was told that when the laptop is ‘plugged in’ take the battery out, it will last longer apparenlty.

some mad logic in there somewhere!

Certainly shouldn’t go in 20 months. Mrs M’s HP battery holds only 5 mins of charge now, but has been left plugged in almost continuously for over 3 years

My old battery only had 6 cells and lasted 1 1/2 hours or so. Bought one of the 12 cell ones off eBay and its very good.

I don’t think it has particularly been overcharged as it was still performing well giving at least 2 hours of use on the battery it sounds as if somethng has actually blown. It never really gave more than 2 hours of battery life.

Batteries “go wrong” and expire early just like many other mechanical/electrical things.

Cheapest option is to grab the battery’s partcode (from the sticker) and check on Ebay. Beware loads of supposed like-for-like batteries, not just second hand/recons, will be underpowered and may not even power up your machine. I know this from experience. Hence why it took 4-5 attempts to get a proper replacement battery for my HP.

There was a recall on HP batteries

http://bpr.hpordercenter.com/hbpr/

80:20 rule.
Run it on battery once over 80% charge point and charge back up when down to 20%.
Laptops are designed to use battery so unplug it, but don’t run it down to extremely low.
Should be able to get a replacement battery but they do take the mickey on prices.