Just realized my old laptop battery is toast after 4 years

It finally died on me mid-meeting last Wednesday, and I had to scramble for a charger. I checked the battery health and it was down to 23 percent capacity. Anyone else just ride a laptop into the ground without noticing?

4 comments

4 Comments

alicemurphy3mo ago

Lol you might be in the minority on this one. 4 years for a laptop battery is actually pretty decent in my experience. Most laptops I've had start getting shaky after like 2-3 years. That 23% thing is rough though, I get that it sucks to have it die right when you need it. But if you're riding it into the ground for 4 years without even checking, that sounds like a win to me honestly. Most people I know are swapping laptops every 3 years just for the hell of it, so getting 4 years out of a battery feels like good value.

christopherw3429d agoMost Upvoted

Wait, how did your buddy not notice the trackpad getting stiff or the case bulging? I've heard that swelling can happen pretty gradual but like, didn't he ever close the lid and see a gap or something? My old Dell started getting a little puffy after like 2 years and I could see the bottom case starting to separate from the keyboard deck. Was it one of those sealed unibody laptops where you can't really see the battery unless you take the whole bottom off? Just curious if there were any warning signs he ignored or if it really just popped out of nowhere.

pat7813mo ago

Buddy of mine had his laptop battery swell up so bad it popped the trackpad out of the case before he even noticed anything was wrong. He was just like "huh, my click feels weird" for like a month before it happened. Four years is nothing to sneeze at.

wendy8203mo ago

Did you see that post about the guy whose laptop battery actually caught fire in his bag? Scary stuff. I read somewhere that after four years lithium ion batteries get way more unstable internally even if they still hold some charge. I guess your buddy got lucky it only popped the trackpad out instead of something worse.