I’m going to run you through options for buying and optimizing replacement batteries.  Let me explain my little situation first.

At the moment, I have two laptops.  To reiterate what these two laptops are, here are the specs:

*notable upgrades between old and new

A little story: What happened was I couldn’t get the first laptop fixed the way I wanted to by HP.  The DV2000t had problems with the LCD backlight, as well as the 12 cell battery not charging at times.  I also had a BSOD problem relating to the wireless (which was not so often, but still a complaint).  So, I sent my old laptop to them.  Days later, I get my laptop with a matte (instead of the WXGA glossy) display, no battery, and no BSOD fix.  WTF?

So, I called HP and gave them my complaint on the things i did not get back/fixed, and then offered to send me the newly released (at the time) DV6500T.  Score!  The man on the other end asked me what I wanted on my DV6500T, and got everything (except for the strikeouts indicated) that I wanted.

Which battery?

So now, I have two laptops; one laptop has no battery, the other has a smaller battery.  These are interchangeable (thankfully), but the battery capacity does tick me off.  I’ve been used to the 12 Cell for quite a while before it was taken away from me, but this 6 Cell is not all that bad, either.  The 12 Cell battery lasts for quite a while, but has a bulge that sticks out. The more portable 6 cell battery is flushed to the underside of the laptop, but it only lasts about 2 hours, roughly .  It sucked especially when I had to take a music class that lasted 3 hours.  Also, the battery design can vary from manufacturers (Lenova and Sony extend their batteries behind the laptop instead of bulging underneath).

So if possible, go for the extended battery whenever you can. The weight difference is not much of a sacrifice in relation to charge capacity.  If you are going to spend time with a smaller battery at school like I did, you’ll most likely be carrying a charger with you running around finding a 3 hole outlet (2 hole outlets exist, sadly).  I spent my freshman year with my old 12 cell and it lasted throughout the longest mondays ever (8AM to 8PM with breaks) without a charger! The price difference is not so much, either. The HP 12 cell will also help to act like elevating keyboard legs as well!  So heres the simple recap:

This is the bigger 12 cell battery (~6 hours) Weight:1.36 lbs Dimensions: 1.45" H x 2.3" W x 8.1" L $149.99

This is the smaller 6 cell battery (~2 hours) Weight: 0.73 lbs Dimensions: 0.8" H x .9" W x 8.1" L $129.99

Buying a replacement.

Hold up, these are really expensive!!!  $160 is quite a fricken’ lot for batteries exclusively from HP.  I actually tried to ask my friend Xai to get me an employee discount on these from Best Buy, but he quit.  Pewp. Even if he did, they would still be well over $100 bucks.  So, I sought after an alternative

I have heard some stories about knockoff batteries from places like ebay blowing up, so I did a bit of research on what to watch out for in laptop batteries.  Common problems include:

• Having less charging cycles
• Holding a fraction of the charges right out of hte box
• Developing awkward heating problems than the originals
• Draining the charge really quickly (from full to empty in minutes)

One place that I have found that received quite a bit of recommendations is from CalCellular.  The prices are reasonable as well:  The 6-cell is $67.88+shipping, and the 12-cell is $84.99.+shipping.  Almost half price!  The charges sometimes holds more than the original do, as well. 

How to make the most out of your battery.

When you first get your battery, optimize it the first time!  Once you get the battery, charge the laptop for as long as you can (ideally twice as long as it takes to get it to fully charge.  So, if it takes 2 hours to charge full, go for 4+ hours).  Then, drain the battery until your OS forces you to shutdown.  Repeat this a couple of times, and your battery will be broken in and ready!

The one common misconception about battery optimization that I’ve been hearing from friends is to continue fully charging and fully draining the battery, also known as “deep-cycling” the batteries.   Laptop batteries are made of lithium-ion, thus do not need to be deep cycled like nickel-cadmium batteries.  If you deep-cycle the batteries, you are counting each of them as.. well.. a cycle.  Li-ion batteries wear off overtime from the amount of cycles, causing them to hold less charges over time.  You only need to deep cycle the first few times.  Don’t overdo it, or you’ll find yourself “breaking” instead of “breaking in.”

Another thing to watch out for is the temperature of your laptop.  Try to keep your laptop (especially the battery in this case) cool by using a laptop cooler such as this, which you may be able to find on slickdeals for $10 from time to time.  Hotter temperatures may degrade capacity.  I made the mistake of leaving my running laptop on my bed many times.  This caused the laptop to heat up from the lack of ventilation, and my battery started to heat up and fail more often.

If you want to conserve power while using your laptop, you can turn off a few things that you may not be needing. 

• If you’re indoors, dim your display!  The display is the biggest power-draining portion of the laptop, and dimming it will help conserve quite a lot of juice. 
• Also, deactivating wi-fi, bluetooth, PCMIA devices, and USB devices will greatly save you some power.
• Turn off some background processes (ctrl+shift+esc or ctrl+alt+del –> task manager)  that you may not be needing at the time, such as updaters, downloaders (ie, torrents),  instant messengers, etc.  Taking off some of these programs relieves the processing on your CPU, which will reduce power consumption and heat.  It sort of works for me, but mostly on Firefox, which sucks the most power off from me.
• Configure your power scheme through windows.
• Remove CDs/DVDs from your optical drive.
• Limit yourself from movies and games.  This will take a toll on your graphics card. (by the way, integrated cards generally save more power than dedicated cards)
• Shove in more RAM.  This will relieve the hard drive from creating too much swap space, which is another intense power sucking device that you can control.
• Use an external display and disable your laptop display.  (I haven’t officially confirmed this, however)

 
An example of Power Consumption Distribution according to msdn.net

You can find out more about batteries in general  here.  It’s very in depth, so if you are in tl;dr mode, just save it.

Have fun charging!  Speaking of Chargers, they fucking lost.  GG.