When you go shopping for a replacement laptop battery, pay careful attention to the specifications for each of your choices. Rechargeable laptop batteries carry both a voltage rating and a milliamp-hour rating. These values can most easily be obtained from the existing battery, the battery charger or the user manual.
The voltage specification is an absolute requirement and must meet the requirements of your hardware. However, the milliamp-hour specification is a measure of the battery’s storage capacity. This means that a battery that has a higher milliamp-hour rating will operate the computer for a longer period of time when it is unplugged than a lower rated battery will. The increased storage capacity results from the greater number of individual cells incorporated into the battery pack.
Some manufacturers prefer to use kilowatt-hours (KWh) instead of milliamp-hours, and although they are different units of energy, they are analogous in that they are both indicative of the amount of energy that a rechargeable battery will hold. Most laptop computers are equipped with the basic batteries offered by the maker in an effort to minimize the cost to the consumer. Batteries that provide an extended operating time are sometimes offered with the original laptop purchase for an upgrade fee, or as an accessory item that is purchase by the consumer at a later date.
You can approximate the running time that a battery will power your computer by ratioing the milliamp-hours of the individual cells. For example, a new battery that is rated at 7,200 MAh will power the computer for approximately one and a half times the amount of time that a 4,800 MAh battery will (7200/4800=1.5). This ratio can also be applied to batteries that are specified in KWh. The key to appreciating this is the fact that the cost ratio generally does not follow by the same factor. Whereas the energy charge in this case is increased by 50%, it could be found that the cost would increase by only 10-20%.
So keep this in mind the next time you need to go shopping for a replacement laptop battery. Laptop computer batteries aren’t cheap, so you might as well get the most battery for the money that you need to spend.
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