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A 9-volt battery is actually made up of six 1.5-volt cells. Those cells are actually quadruple size, but you can make them work in AAA compartments.

With some needle-nosed pliers, pry apart the casing of the 9-volt compaq laptop battery. As long as you’re careful not to puncture the cells themselves, there’s nothing harmful inside. Once you get it open, pull off any casing that’s holding the cells together and you should get a sort of sausage string of cells.

Clip those apart, but leave some of the connector metal on each end of each cell. When you put them into a AAA compartment, bend the metal over to give you the extra room and conductivity to make them fit.

You may or may not be saving money here, since the cost of a 9-volt compaq evo n400c battery does run roughly 6 times as much as a single AAA. But in a pinch, the 9-volt battery could come in handy, just don’t expect to use it as a 9-volt battery any more after you do this.

Also via Kipkay, The Energizer brand of A3 12-volt batteries can be pried apart to reveal eight button-cell batteries, useful for watches and other devices. Here you’re saving money: the 12-volt is a couple bucks and each of the button cells can run about $5.

That’s it for now. Be careful if you do this, compaq evo n410c battery,by the way. Don’t want you slicing up your hands or the batteries. Use proper protective measures.

Waiting for a friend to meet me at a local Starbucks last week I took notice of the two netbooks—an ASUS Eee PC 1000HE ($385.53) and an HP Mini 1000 – in the shop. The ASUS Eee PC 1000HE’s owner drank her Frappuccino without an AC adapter awkwardly hanging from the table. The 1000HE, which is outfitted with a high capacity six-cell battery, got over 7 hours of battery life on our Web surfing battery test. The lady with the HP Mini 1000 (with a 3-cell battery) however, had a power cord stretched across the table and connected to the wall (I suspect that her coffee had turned cold by the time the table next to that socket freed up). That netbook, while more compact than most on the market, gets only 2.5 hours on a charge.

There are a handful of netbooks, including the ASUS Eee PC 1000HE and the Samsung N110 ($379.82), that don’t have to be accompanied by their power cords for a day trip, because their standard six-cell batteries provide over five hours of battery life on a single charge. And it is that type of netbook that should be standard in this crowded market. But it isn’t.

Many netbook manufacturers, including Dell, HP, and  Lenovo,  seem reluctant to ship devices with extended batteries, saddling users with 3-cell systems that last just over two hours. Currently, Dell only offers its Mini 9 and 10 with a 4-cell battery. HP does offer an upgrade to a 6-cell for $79, but most models come standard with a 3-cell battery.

The reasoning behind this? The reigning theory is that it has to do with price, but manufacturers also seem to think that people don’t want to use undersized netbooks with 10-inch screens and cramped keyboards for more than a few hours at a time, APPLE,so what does it matter, anyway?

But that is just not the case. Even if you won’t use a netbook for more than two hours at a time, one of the best use cases for netbooks involves pulling it out of your bag to shoot off an e-mail or surf the Web for an hour and simply tossing it back in your bag when you are done.  It is anywhere, anytime computing, and that “where” often includes places where there are outlets.

A few months ago, we asked LAPTOP readers in an online poll how much A1078 battery power was enough for a netbook. The overwhelming answer was 5 to 8 hours.

Some of the largest notebook vendors are crippling their netbooks by bundling them with 3-cell batteries. Are they doing this on purpose to prevent cannibalization and make their larger laptops look good? Consumers want longer PowerBook G4 15 battery life. If the cheaper netbook doesn’t provide adequate run-time for, let’s say, a plane ride from New York to California, they will inevitably pick one of the longer running mainstream laptops in the company’s line up. On the other hand, they might just choose a vendor like ASUS, Acer, or Samsung, all of whom offer solid 6-cell systems.

Highly mobile laptops should run for at least five hours, and all netbooks should come standard with six-cell A1045 batteries. Not only will end users be happier, but I won’t have to count as many AC adapters.

Some Windows 7 users are experiencing anomalies with battery life, or at least how Windows 7 reports remaining battery life. The issue seemed worthy of exploring, but not big enough to cause any significant damage to Microsoft’s flagship desktop operating system.

The official statement from Microsoft last week was:

“Microsoft has been made aware that some computers running Windows 7 receive a warning that the PA3399U-1BRS battery needs to be replaced when the battery is new or in good health. In conjunction with our hardware partners, we are investigating this issue. The warning received on some computers using Windows 7 uses firmware information (information about hardware status provided by the PC itself) to determine if battery replacement is needed. We are working with our partners to determine the root cause of what appear to be erroneous warnings and will update the TechNet forum with information and guidance as it becomes available.

The Toshiba battery notification is new functionality in Windows 7, so the notification itself should not be an indication that customers are having this issue. Windows Vista and Windows XP did not display notifications when it was time to replace the battery. Customers who have already confirmed their battery is fine should contact Microsoft technical assistance for help.”

Then, over the weekend I received a status update from a Microsoft source that asked to remain anonymous since the statement was unofficial:

“We’ve had 8 million pre-release testers on old hardware, 60 million PCs, and now this report of PA3399U-1BAS battery problems on old hardware is surfacing. This appears to be a very limited issue–aside from the discussion in the forum you noted in your story, we have yet to see any official reports or open tickets come in through tech support call centers. In testing on this issue the root cause appears to be actual battery performance or failure, which Windows 7 is reporting (via the notification), but not causing. So the notifications appear to be working as they were designed to do from what we’re seeing. Microsoft has extensive testing, QA and support efforts and has multiple groups looking deeper at this issue, along with our OEM partners, to ensure that it is, in fact, the anomaly that it appears to be at present.”

That update was followed with a similar declaration by Steven Sinofksy, president of the Windows Division for Microsoft, in a blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog:

“Using all the tools at our disposal including contacting customers reporting this issue on forums, customer service communications, partnerships with our PC makers, and of course the telemetry in Windows 7, we have been monitoring reports and discussions regarding this new feature, trying to separate reports of the designed behavior from those that might indicate an issue with Windows 7. In the latter cases we are trying to understand the scope of applicability and obtain hardware on which to reproduce a faulty behavior.   To date all such steps indicate that we do have customers seeing reports of PA3399U-2BAS battery health issues and in all cases we have investigated Windows 7 has simply accurately detected a failing battery. ”

Sinofsky does more than simply deny responsibility or pass the buck, though. He provides an in-depth explanation of how the hardware, the battery, and the operating system work together to determine and report on the condition of the PA3399U-2BRS battery.

AMD is crying foul over battery tests run by computer makers and consumer electronics publications, according to a report in the New York Times. The chip maker claims that the standard benchmark used, MobileMark 2007, unfairly gives an advantage to Intel CPUs.

From the article: “Intel is advantaged in this environment because they have optimized their architecture to have better  FK890 life when the computer isn’t doing anything,” AMD’s Patrick Moorhead said.

Well, isn’t that a good thing in general? Shouldn’t AMD be trying to make its dell chips use less power when they’re not doing anything?

But here’s the thing: We don’t use MobileMark to test battery life, and systems with AMD chips still see worse endurance than those with Intel chips. Read on for our results.

We took a look at seven different AMD machines we reviewed over the past several months, and how they fared on the LAPTOP Battery Test, which continuously surfs the Web over Wi-Fi until the GK479 is dead.

In the ultraportable category, the HP dv2’s endurance was almost half the category average.Inspiron 1721 battery, Inspiron 1720 battery.

HP’s consumer netbook just got a makeover. We wouldn’t call it extreme, but the 2.7-pound Mini 210 is significantly different both inside and out. Like other new netbooks, this one features Intel’s latest Atom N450 processor, which has two benefits. First, the efficient CPU should help the machine get over 9 hours of battery life. Plus, the N450’s smaller package size allowed HP to create a more unified design, although the six-cell battery dips down a bit.

And this is no ordinary-looking netbook. The Mini 210 is available four colors; the Black Crystal and Silver Crystal designs have cool Imprint patterns, and the Pacific Blue and Sonoma Red are solid colors. HP calls it a 360-degree design because these colors and patterns wrap around the entire system, which looks pretty cool. (Check out the video.)

During our brief hands-on time with a pre-production model, we liked the chiclet-sytle keyboard on the Mini 210, which reminds us of the more business-minded Mini 5102. The touchpad couldn’t be more different,hp laptop battery , however; the buttons are integrated into the pad. In general we prefer discrete buttons, and we’re not sure this implementation will be good enough to change our mind. Read on for more details and to check out the gallery and hands-on video.

Like the Dell Inspiron Mini 10, HP offers a ton of options to trick out your system, including a full HD display and Broadcom CrystalHD Enhanced Video Accelerator for smoother full-screen video playback on sites like Hulu. Other potential goodies include 3G broadband and GPS. (Only the Dell offers a TV tuner.)

On the software front, HP is emphasizing the cloud and multimedia. HP CloudDrive, powered by ZumoDrive allows users to access documents, photos and music (including iTunes libraries and playlists) online. MediaStream lets users stream content form one hp pavilion dv2000 battery to another over the Web. You also get QuickSync software (for syncing files between two computers over a local network) and QuickWeb (for instant-on Web surfing, powered by Splashtop).

GPGPU acceleration and tessellated graphics may soon break free from the clutches of your desktop. Acer is reportedly working toward releasing the Aspire 8942G-728G1280TWN, according to Fudzilla. This 10-pound behemoth promises to work out your biceps as well as your 3D benchmark score.

While the advances in DirectX 11 may only be noticeable to the most hardcore graphics geeks, the standard is slowly starting to penetrate the market. Acer’s new notebook is expected to pack an impressive spec sheet to go along with the DX11 graphics API. We’re talking an Intel Core i7 processor at 1.6GHz, acer btp-42c1 battery,8GB of DDR3 RAM, and not one, but two 640GB hard drives.

On the graphics side, the reputable ATI Radeon HD5850 will be calling the shots (and frags) for gamers. And to top it all off, the Acer notebook will ship with an 18.4-inch 1080p (1920-by-1080 resolution) LED-backlit display, acer btp-43d1 battery,Blu-ray drive, 5-in-1 card reader, Bluetooth, and 8-cell battery. If you listen carefully, you can hear your laptop crying softly in shame.

The notebook has yet to appear on Acer’s site, and we have yet to confirm the specs and availability with Acer (we’ll update this post as soon as we do), but Fudzilla says that the new PA3399U-1BRS should be on sale in early 2010.