This is an issue that comes up frequently. Someone has a laptop that is only a couple years old, but the battery won’t hold a charge for more than about an hour when it used to last for many hours.
What I usually find out is that this person leaves it plugged in almost all of the time. They only unplug if they want to use their laptop somewhere besides the desk or table they normally use. They think it might run out of juice.
That is the worst thing you can do with your laptop battery. It needs to be used. The entire battery, not just the top 10%. If you always keep it plugged in the battery will become useless. It is best to only plug it in when it is less than 10% left and then charge it until it is full. Once it is full, unplug it. By doing this your battery will last much longer and continue to give you hours of use per charge.
I know sometimes this is not possible if you are in an important meeting and can’t risk having the battery go dead. Leaving it plugged in once in a while will not cause damage but the constant plug in will. Another good thing to do is once a month let it die completely. This is like a reset for the battery.
One more reason to not leave your laptop plugged in all the time is that it can cause a chemical reaction that can break your laptop or in extreme cases cause a fire. Here is a picture of a battery I replaced recently. The one on the right is a new battery. The one on the left was removed from a laptop. It had actually broken one of the screws holding the bottom onto the laptop.
Here is a video I made a few years ago that talks about this.
So, what can you do if your battery is not holding a change any longer and your computer is not that old? It used to be easy to replace batteries since they were only held to the laptop with a couple clips on the bottom of the laptop. You can still replace batteries but now you need to remove the back cover of the laptop to do it. If you need help doing this, I can swap your battery for you.
Want to get my computer services updates and reminders directly into your email inbox? Sign up for my FREE Newsletter!