Laptop battery power meter & sysinfo interval

[DaveBo]

I've been playing with my Win98, HP laptop's power meter and a VB app using the sysinfo control to monitor battery charge/discharge.

The info seems to be updating every 2 minutes, but with > 4 year-old batts, a lot can happen in 2 min.

Anyone know if the interval can be changed, e.g. to once every minute?
Or if there's a better way to monitor this?

Thanks, DaveBo

[dglienna]

My battery is dying fast in my HP laptop, which is about 2 years old. It lasts about 20 minutes on a good day, yet the power meter always says that it's fully charged, even when it is shutting itself down automatically. Luckily the Windows control knows when to shut down power.

[-TPM-]

Try searching you regestry, if there is a setting that's probably where it is.
It also sounds like you both need to totaly discharge you batteries.

[dglienna]

I've only done that once before. It was a while ago, when the battery was still good. Batteries only last about 2 years, so I'm going to replace mine when it gets a bit worse. So far, it runs long enough to do what I need when on-site.
It's rare that I can't plug it in, though.

[-TPM-]

Laptop batteries should last a whole lot longer than that. I have an old dell (~6 years old) that still works fine. Sure it doesn't last as long as it did when it was new, but that's to be expected.

[GreenApple123]

I bought a replacement battery for my Hp laptop about a month ago from Laptopsforless.com
and it works great. Is there any reason to think that a replacement Hp laptop battery would be any worse than the manufacturers? My concern is the laptop battery fire risk, would this be a risk with a replacement battery?