Larger Capacity Laptop Batteries

[remand]

My new laptop chews through it's battery and i'm looking to get a secondary as a backup at uni etc.

I'm wondering if anyone has bought any generic one's from what seems to be thousands of websites or fleabay etc and how they hold up compared to the genuine versions from the actual laptop manufacturer.

The laptop in question is a dell studio 1557 i7 720qm.

Cheers

[ocusa]

I bought one for an older model a few years ago. Worked fine for me. Try to buy from someone who specializes in batteries if you can.

[taboo_]

I've bought multiple batteries off eBay for lappys before. Laptop batteries have a tendancy to die VERY quick - it often has to do with leaving the battery in while having it plugged into the mains.

I've never had a problem with the generic ones on eBay and have never paid over $30 for one. What you want to do is find one that fits and get one with the highest amount of mAh - the higher the mAh the longer it'll last on full charge.

In case you don't already know when you run off your battery you want to set up a power profile in windows that steps your CPU down (so it's not chugging away at top speed) and also drop your screen's brightness all the way down - doing that'll help A LOT.

[taboo_]

As I kind of mentioned you also want to avoid having the battery in while it's plugged into the mains - unfortunately this means if you bump the power cable or have a black out your lappy will just die but it will help the life of your battery.

And if you also mainly use your lappy plugged in OR it'll go through lengthy periods where it's not getting used at all (summer holidays) you want to store the battery at ~40% charge.

(otherwise just unplug your lecturer's projector and use his 240v's ).