Portable battery options for laptop?

bairn7

Following on from my stupid decision to purchase a cheap laptop (separate thread), the battery life was advertised as 5 hours but is actually less than 1!

I may need to keep the laptop due to separate issues meaning that I can't seem to restore to factory settings to delete my data.

If I do keep the laptop, do the USB chargers give a good extension to battery life for a laptop? I'm hoping to find something that I can take on holiday (on the plane) and that would give me, say, 4 or 5 hours of additional juice when plugged directly into the laptop. Any suggestions?

Thanks

arciere

A few points:
- What laptop are we talking about?
- USB chargers can't be normally used to charge laptops
- 5h vs 1h is a big difference, are you sure that the advertised 5h is for your exact model and not something else? What do you do in that hour? Web surfing, watching videos, games, etc.?
- If the only reason that is stopping you from returning the laptop is the inability to reset it, I am sure it can be solved fairly easily if you could explain what exactly happens when you try to reset the laptop.

sal_III

You can use tools like Dban to wipe the disk of your personal data, more securely than "factory restore" if that's the only thing stopping you from selling the laptop and getting a new one.

Many laptops have removable batteries and manufacturers sell larger capacity replacements.

How much mAh is your current battery? It's quite possible that laptop is simply not using battery efficient components and you might struggle getting larger enough power bank to get you to 4-5h. What's the Laptop make/model?

Also a thing to consider is the power connection, if it's USB-C, it should be easy enough to find a generic power bank, if it's a vendor specific, you might be stuck with what the laptop manufacturer has to offer and the options aren't great in terms of price.

bairn7

arciere wrote: »

A few points:
- What laptop are we talking about?
- USB chargers can't be normally used to charge laptops
- 5h vs 1h is a big difference, are you sure that the advertised 5h is for your exact model and not something else? What do you do in that hour? Web surfing, watching videos, games, etc.?
- If the only reason that is stopping you from returning the laptop is the inability to reset it, I am sure it can be solved fairly easily if you could explain what exactly happens when you try to reset the laptop.

Thanks

The laptop is here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07WF7571B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

During the hour I am doing absolutely nothing...no open windows/apps. I just have the battery window open and I can literally count down the percentages. It has to be a problem with the battery.

When I try to use the reset function on windows 10 it starts and I get the spinning wheel for around 45 mintues and then the message "There was a problem resetting your PC. No changes have been made". I have tried various command prompt suggestions that I found online but none work.

The fact that I can't seem to remove my data or unlink my windows account is the only reason why I haven't returned.

bairn7

sal_III wrote: »

You can use tools like Dban to wipe the disk of your personal data, more securely than "factory restore" if that's the only thing stopping you from selling the laptop and getting a new one.

Many laptops have removable batteries and manufacturers sell larger capacity replacements.

How much mAh is your current battery? It's quite possible that laptop is simply not using battery efficient components and you might struggle getting larger enough power bank to get you to 4-5h. What's the Laptop make/model?

Also a thing to consider is the power connection, if it's USB-C, it should be easy enough to find a generic power bank, if it's a vendor specific, you might be stuck with what the laptop manufacturer has to offer and the options aren't great in terms of price.

Thanks. I would use DBAN but to return the laptop I have to return it as it was received, with windows 10 installed (which I don't have).

The power connection is a USB-C.

arciere

bairn7 wrote: »

The fact that I can't seem to remove my data or unlink my windows account is the only reason why I haven't returned.

You can use a software to securely erase your data and after that install Windows from a USB drive (you can download Windows 10 Home from Microsoft).

arciere

bairn7 wrote: »

Thanks. I would use DBAN but to return the laptop I have to return it as it was received, with windows 10 installed (which I don't have).

That doesn't apply if the laptop is defective.

bairn7

arciere wrote: »

You can use a software to securely erase your data and after that install Windows from a USB drive (you can download Windows 10 Home from Microsoft).

Presumably I'll need to pay for windows 10 again?

arciere

bairn7 wrote: »

Presumably I'll need to pay for windows 10 again?

No, you can download the software for free from Microsoft, then it will activate automatically.

Neil_Jones

arciere wrote: »

You can use a software to securely erase your data and after that install Windows from a USB drive (you can download Windows 10 Home from Microsoft).

bairn7 wrote: »

Presumably I'll need to pay for windows 10 again?

No you don't.
You just reload Windows (see my post in your other thread), don't feed a product key in and it reactivates itself.

Windows 10 once activated is hardware based, so if its on the same hardware as before it sorts itself out.

bairn7

Thanks all. Looks like I'm barking up the wrong tree with a portable battery. Creating an installation media to reinstall windows and then returning looks like the best approach.