It’s an acknowledged fact amongst laptop users that laptop batteries don’t last forever. Unfortunately, they have a limited number of charge/discharge cycles beyond which the amount of charge they will hold starts to drop. Once the charge starts to drop, the amount of time that you can run on battery alone will become shorter, until eventually the battery will run for so little time that it is almost unusable. Eventually the battery will fail.
When this happens you can choose to either run the laptop on mains power only, or else you can buy a replacement battery for it instead. As many laptops are actually required to be used on the run, and hence there there is no mains access, a replacement battery is frequently the chosen solution. The 9 cell battery for the Dell Inspiron 1525 was chosen.
The battery that this laptop shipped with was only a 6 cell battery. As a 9 cell battery, the purchased battery was not only a replacement but also an upgrade. When fully charged, on the first test, it lasted for more than four hours. This was with only limited processes running-namely it was used for web browsing and document creation, with no media of any sort playing. Power management was set to battery mode automatically, and hence it was on power saving. WiFi remained on, and the screen was not dimmed as low as it possibly could be, so overall battery life may still be improved a little more.
Like any battery, the installation of the replacement battery was a simple matter of plugging it in. The removal of the old battery took a matter of seconds, and it was soon stored away. The new battery slotted into its place. It was slightly larger than the previous battery and so stuck out a little but this would be expected when moving from a 6 cell to a 9 cell battery. There was no give to the fit-despite sticking out a little the battery fitted nice and securely, as would be hoped for an electrical item.
Straight out of the box the battery had some charge but was not fully charged. Despite being plugged in, its charge would not increase beyond what it already had, and so the system was completely powered down, everything unplugged, and the computer started just on mains before the battery was plugged in again. This helped the computer to ‘forget’ the previous battery and recognise what was now installed as a fresh battery.
The battery was actually already fully charged by this point, but the computer hadn’t been recognizing it. During the test, and in further use afterwards where the load on the battery was far higher, the battery performed well, and most importantly it did not ever get warm. It remained nice and cool even when it was charging.
This has proved to be a more than capable replacement for the stock battery that came with the Dell Inspiron 1525. If it has a similar usage life, it will prove to be excellent value for money.
