New toys...

We all like new toys - and telling the world we have them.

And I've got a new toy!

I'm fairly sure I've ranted about my netbook on here once or twice - I love the thing to bits, after all. But, well, it's not perfect.

And the one thing that bugs me is battery life. I can use it for between 1-2 hours. An hour playing warcraft or two hours with notepad, tea and some serious thinking.

(I know,doesn't happen often lately)

But if you use it for half an hour, while eating lunch at work...maybe use it later in the kitchen, listening to the radio while you cook. That leaves you at 50% or less.

Then you've got to start making choices - because deep discharging (aka, running till flat) is very bad for lithium rechargeable batteries.

So do you use it for another half an hour, push it to 25%? But what if you need it in a hurry for something else afterwards... shouldn't you be recharging it?

However, this problem is now solved.

For I've gone and spent money (painful though it was) for a new battery. It's not the same size, nor twice or thrice as big. It's 3.4 times as big. So a naive assessment says it should last 3.4 hours to 6.8. This sounds like an improvement!

But no, better yet - because it's new and not started to degrade it hasn't suffered the fate of the old one yet. The old one could store only 80% of a full charge due to age.

So that's really 4.25-8.5 hours. Getting better...

And still further - because it has more cells (9 vs 3) the drain on each cell is reduced by a third. So there is less energy lost at that stage as well. I can't quantify this (to do so would require a really sensitive thermometer and a sealed, controlled environment) - but it's one more reason the new battery is just...

...well...


...shiny....