You can, but bear in mind that a lithium battery will expire of age as much as use - expect 18-24 months out of a battery treated reasonably, used or not.

Read through this.  Also read the other parts of that website for a good understanding of how batteries work and so on. 

Or you may pay for a new battery and only get 12 months + a day, just long enough for the warranty to expire.

I am more than just a little PO'd because I bought not 1 BUT 2 laptops from Dell on March 17, 2007 and now not 1 BUT 2 laptop batteries are toast!  The batteries were also the U4873, my laptop is the XPS M1710 and my wife's laptop is the Inspiron 9400.  My battery started dying in February but my wife had had 2 surgeries and I thought since I had paid for the expensive "complete care" package, I could just deal with it later.  Then a week ago, imagine, my wife's laptop battery dies!  I got a chance to call and talk to support today and was told that neither battery would be replaced as the "complete care" that I gave them almost a grand for (between the two laptops) would not apply, and the warranty on the batteries is only 1 year so I was SOL.

I am so angry that I could spit!  I spent a ton of money on these laptops and BOTH lose their batteries at approx. the 1 year mark?  That is NOT a coincidence, that is DEFECTIVE!  They told me there was no other complaints from other Dell customers about this battery, so there is not a defective situation...I guess they don't read their own forum or even their own Customer Reviews, as customers have rated this battery as a 2.2 out of 5 huh?  I get even madder when I look at my old Compaq laptop, which is 4 years old, and the battery is STILL going strong!!

So I have been told to drop another $600 dollars into Dell's pockets to buy 2 more batteries that will probably only last a year + 1 day, to void the warranty again!    You would think Dell would stand behind their product and ensure that it is powered by a battery that is has a reasonable expectation to last more than a year + 1 day.

If you have had this battery die on you too, then call and complain to Dell so that they can get an acurate account of how many customers there are out there, who are being served up these substandard batteries, and then maybe they will do something about it.

Greg Ball -

Who needs to buy 2 new laptops in two years and is second guessing himself at staying loyal to Dell.

I don't know whether it is true or not, but I believe Ford once asked his engineers to compile repair records for every part of the cars he was producing.  Based on this list, he identified parts that never got repaired.  He then called the engineers responsible for designing those parts and chewed them out for not designing those parts cheaper so that they would fail at the same frequency as other parts on the car.  His theory was that everytime a car went to the junk heap with a part that had life left on it, ford was losing money.

Similarly, Dell sells a warranty and any part that lasts for too long beyond the warranty loses dell money because there may have been a way to make the part cheaper so that it would fail right after the warranty ends.  This is a cynical way of looking at things, but the bottomline is that making things last longer takes money.  If you are not willing to pay for it in the form of an extended warranty, Dell is not going to incur the cost voluntarily either.  In the case of batteries, there may be no way of extending their life reliably beyond a year or so, so why go through the trouble of selling an extended warranty and having to replace the battery when it does fail?  Instead dell chooses not to sell extended warranties on the batteries.

I am not saying it is acceptable, but given that I am not a technical person who knows the ins and outs of battery design, and given that dell does not manufacture them (batteries are made by a few companies worldwide and sold to all laptop, cell phone and other electronics manufacturers), I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.  Remember that when you buy a laptop with a different company's logo and label on it, you could still be getting the exact same parts inside as you would get if you buy dell, including the battery.  If the original manufacturer of the battery is not willing to give any of his buyers an extended warranty on the battery, that is the level of confidence they have in their product and none of the buyers in turn will provide an extended warranty to their buyers (in this case, us) either.

I did read the article you posted a link to, and it has great information, but if the battery died because I have the XPS and it runs hot, why did my wife's laptop battery die in the inspiron 9400, when all she does is read email and post to message boards etc?  It just seems a little fishy to me that both of our laptop batteries died within 6 weeks of each other.

I think that Dell is peddling inferior batteries in these laptops, as evidenced by all of the complaints here on the forum, as well as the low rating of 2.2 in customer feedback on the battery.  I didn't cheap out on one thing in my laptop, and yet here I am 13 months later, having to spend $300 for a battery.  If that happened in your car you would be screaming fowl, so why is it acceptable in a laptop?

Just my opinion.

I have read that article.

but what i want to know what do you usualy do or follow to increase ur battery life.

I want to know from people who visit this forum what precautions they take and things they follow for battery long life.