Gateway Parts

gateway battery life?

i have the gateway m-series laptop and i was wondering how long is the battery normally suppose to last? it's very new and the most i ever get out of it is two and a half hours after each charge, i haven't had a laptop before so i don't know if that is normal or not. thank you. =)

Public Comments

1. That is not normal, my Gateway MA7 is a XP Pro and gets about 4-5 hours. Do you have a Best Buy close by? if so, take it to Geek Squad. duh duh ching.
2. two and a half hours is pretty good actually, there is normally a battery saver or power saver mode you can put ur laptop in by clicking on the battery when its unplugged to milk another hour or two, but it all depends on how many cells ur laptop battery has. I have a 12 cell battery which is almost the biggest you can get, and i dont think ive ever gotten more than three hours of batter life. two and a half though sounds normal. as a side not putting ur laptop in power saver mode also really slows down it's performance. just fyi
3. not bad time how long it lasts is down to what programs u are running
4. Its normal. There are a lot of ways to reduce the drain on your laptop battery. 1.You should toggle your power options. 2. Turn down brightness 3. Reduce the background programs with msconfig 4. Take out all unnecessary USB devices 5. Remove DVD/CD from drives. 6. Turn off your hard drive when not in use. This tutorial has a lot of good tips: http://www.delete-computer-history.com/laptop-battery-life.html