How secure are "Slice" Batteries? (Dell e6410)

[Ashton]

I'm very dissapointed with my notebook's battery life. While I can get a average ~2.5 hours out of it doing light tasks (web surfing, word processing, etc), I watched a single 22 minute TV episode, and that took it from nearly 100% down to like 10% or less...

There are two battery upgrades for my laptop, one is the typical "replace the current battery with a bigger one" (in this case 6-cell to 9-cell, which seems like it would only give me at *best* 50% more time) or the "big" upgrade, the "Slice" which is a massive 12-cell battery that plugs into the notebook's docking connector and more than doubles the current battery size (giving me 200% more time, plus the ability, if I chose, to swap out the primary battery for a fresh one)

My big concern though is how secure this is, I'll be using it primarily on my lap, often in a car, and I dont want to risk damaging the Dock connector, nor the battery... Has anyone used one of these?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/OEM-Genuine...86846?pt=Laptop_Batteries&hash=item43b8f843be

EDIT:
on a related note, would upgrading the 7200RPM HDD to an SSD make a significant difference in battery life, or would I be better off spending that $$$ on batteries? (boot time is fine, ~45 seconds cold boot)

 

[450]

If you are stationary in one location, such as in a car, I'd recommend a power inverter for your car. 150w should be sufficient.

 

[pxc]

Something is seriously wrong with your power management if the laptop is draining 90% in 22 minutes watching a video. Fixing that first should help. I also second the suggestion of getting an inverter.

A SSD to replace your 7200RPM drive probably won't make a big difference in battery life. While in heavy use (active R/W), you may see up to a 3W difference between a power hungry 2.5" 7200RPM drive and a low power SSD. At idle (but not sleep), the difference is typically around 1W or less. IOW, saving 1-3W-Hr per hour won't extend a 60W-Hr 6 cell battery by much when it normally only lasts 2.5 hours on that laptop. You'd gain approx 6-19 extra minutes with a SSD, more likely closer to the lower range. But there are good reasons to upgrade to a SSD if you want a more responsive system.

 

[Ashton]

If you are stationary in one location, such as in a car, I'd recommend a power inverter for your car. 150w should be sufficient.

I have a 250+W inverter, but when I plug my laptop in (even powered off) it only lasts around 10-30 seconds and the inverters starts alarming and if I don't unplug the laptop or turn off hte inverter it turns itself off and I have to reset it... This is why I'm looking at the 2nd/3rd batteries...

Something is seriously wrong with your power management if the laptop is draining 90% in 22 minutes watching a video. Fixing that first should help. I also second the suggestion of getting an inverter.

Well, I had the laptop on "super-power-saver" where everything possible was turned off, including WiFi and Bluetooth, and it was a 22min video in 1080pHD... I dont have the exact encoding info but I can run it through handbreak if it matters... Was using, I beleive Zoom Player to play it.

I was thinking it kinda strange too since I get ~2.5 hours normally (sometimes 3 if I go light on the WiFi as well)

A SSD to replace your 7200RPM drive probably won't make a big difference in battery life. While in heavy use (active R/W), you may see up to a 3W difference between a power hungry 2.5" 7200RPM drive and a low power SSD. At idle (but not sleep), the difference is typically around 1W or less. IOW, saving 1-3W-Hr per hour won't extend a 60W-Hr 6 cell battery by much when it normally only lasts 2.5 hours on that laptop. You'd gain approx 6-19 extra minutes with a SSD, more likely closer to the lower range. But there are good reasons to upgrade to a SSD if you want a more responsive system.

wow, I was expecting like a 10% increase in power... At this point certainly not worth it. My system is plenty responsive and fast, and I cant afford a ton of upgrades at this point so that one is certainly getting scratched off the list unless I find somone on here trading one for something I have to trade.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

I have a Vostro 3450 and the 9 cell *DOUBLES* the run time over the 6 cell. 48Wh to 90WH... from about 3 to 6 hours

Typically slice batteries are very secure with multiple attachment points to the bottom of the laptop. That particular battery has 8 hooks to lock into the bottom of the machine.

Personally, I would not trade space for speed. SSD capacity is seriously limited....

 

[Meaker]

Well the new M500 series should be under $600 for 960GB or around $300 for the 480GB (sizes listed are after over provisioning, so just formatting loses after that)

The speed boost is pretty nice for every day use.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

$600 for 960GB.whoa..that is just NUTS...

 

[Meaker]

Well now that they can get more per package it has a large impact on cost to manufacture.

A note, 128GB drives will perform like the old 64GB (a bit better due to some improvements), 256GB like 128GB etc as they share the same package/die numbers.

 

[rudy]

What are the specs of your laptop?

Seriously my Samsung series 7 gamer lasts that long.

 

[Meaker]

The specs of his notebook are in his signature.

 

[rudy]

sorry I turn signatures off. But now that I looked at it I still don't know exactly which CPU it is since he does not list the model number. But it looks like a faster one, no discrete GPU, I can only guess either he has a bad battery, its an older model CPU, going with odler since he only has a 250GB HDD. I think if you can upgrade your laptop to a newer model you could save a lot more battery. Even a slice is not going to suddenly get you into all day material.

If you cant do that then go carefully through all the power saving options.

 

[MichaelH]

$600 for 960GB.whoa..that is just NUTS...

Not when you see how much better it makes the laptop experience.

 

[Ashton]

sorry I turn signatures off. But now that I looked at it I still don't know exactly which CPU it is since he does not list the model number. But it looks like a faster one, no discrete GPU, I can only guess either he has a bad battery, its an older model CPU, going with odler since he only has a 250GB HDD. I think if you can upgrade your laptop to a newer model you could save a lot more battery. Even a slice is not going to suddenly get you into all day material.

If you cant do that then go carefully through all the power saving options.

Actually, the laptop has a 512mb Nvidea NVS 3100m graphics chip
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvs_techspecs.html

If it helps, here's the screenshot from Dell's System Detect (for some reason the columns are out of alignment...):
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8499597/e6410_dell_HWSS.png

No idea about the battery's "health" I got it used but it still has a year of warenty on it (Complete Care PRO support with next-business-day), so if it's a battery issue I may contact Dell about a replacement...

Also the windows battery meter seems a bit flakey... I powered it up earlier today (in standard "power saver" mode) and it said 90% with around 3:10 hours remaining (WiFi/BT on, screen on average brightness) I'm going to run a controlled test later to see if that video was a fluke (Poorly encoded?) or if indeed the battery does drain that fast on video...

None the less, thank you all for your feedback, I'm deffinately going with the Slice when I get around to ordering it (dont need it right away, may watch eBay for a while)

I'll be looking at the power settings more closely and seeing what I can adjust after I run the tests, will report back my results...

EDIT:

$600 for 960GB.whoa..that is just NUTS...

Not when you see how much better it makes the laptop experience.

I fail to see the need for ~1TB of SSD, especially when the laptop has a hot-swappable media bay that I can slide a second drive into. If I were going the SSD rout I'd get a ~250gb SSD and keep my media on the secondary drive, but that's just me, I never use an optical drive these days *shrug*

 

[W.Feather]

if it's anything like the one on my It? its not moving, two years later and I stopped using it because it Now fails to hold a charge

 

[thefordmccord]

Something is up. My E6520 with a 9 cell bettery will last 8-9 hours of constant use (typing, surfing and youtubeing).

 

[Adam.C]

I use a 6410 for work. Off the charger / dock I can last a good 4 hours easily. Watching movies and stuff I still get a very good 2-3 hours. Usually even longer. Something must be up with your battery because this is the best battery life I have ever had in a laptop. Although I have not owned many.

 

[Ashton]

I use a 6410 for work. Off the charger / dock I can last a good 4 hours easily. Watching movies and stuff I still get a very good 2-3 hours. Usually even longer. Something must be up with your battery because this is the best battery life I have ever had in a laptop. Although I have not owned many.

This is what my test today showed.

I didn't have the specific file on my laptop anymore but I had another one in the same format and approximately the same length. I charged the battery to 100%, let the HDD finish everything it was doing (waited for the light to go out and stay out for 10 seconds) then unplugged it, double-clicked the file and let it play. I left WiFi on and connected just for sake of argument.

At the end of the 22 minute video the battery said 83% remaining with somewhere between 2:10 and 2:30 remaining. I'm gonna try copying over the original file again and running it to see if it's the specific file.

The only other thing I can think of is that the exhaust vent might have been partially blocked while I was watching this (I was in a car so I didn't have much room and it's easy for me to accidentally let the laptop slide around and block a side exaust port) which might have caused the cooling system to work overtime and drain the battery... Though I'm still getting the slice because I'd like a solid 5-8 hours of work time and the cost difference between it and the 9 cell "extended" battery is minimal.

Will run a few more tests and report back on the results. Though at this point it is looking like a fluke.

EDIT:
Just did the test with the original file (and had the wrong format, it was actually AVI not MKV, but still 1080p and 22 minutes --- though oddly enough much smaller ~550mb vs the mkv being ~875mb) when the file finished playing I actually had MORE power left - 86% with 2:40 remaining. So I'm chalking this all up to problems with cooling in the car, since I'm 100% sure that at some point it slipped and slid and the vent got covered up at least part of the time... (though I'm still getting the slice so I'll be sure to have 5-8 hours of power)