rented laptop battery life

Then just let the guy at the counter know...

I don't know the usual charge of those laptops. But if it's a normal laptop, and they didn't get bigger batteries for them, then a charge should last about 4 hours. If you got it fully charged, and it died in 2 hours then that means the battery is nearly dead and can't hold a charge.

I had that problem once and they let me check out an adapter so I could continue to work. Just ask for one and I'm sure they will give you one.  

I had that problem once and they let me check out an adapter so I could continue to work. Just ask for one and I'm sure they will give you one.  

I work in the library and am responsible for checking out laptops to people. The thing is, during the day it gets very busy (especially around this time of the year) and there just simply arent enough batteries to fit the demand. In many cases, we have to rent out laptops that arent fully charged because we have no other choice. If your laptop is close to dying and you still have more time with it, you can come back to where you checked it out from and either request a new batterty or a wall charger (especially if youre working on something that you can't close out of.)

Ditto on this.

I work at the Student Tech Center and it's the same story with the laptops that we check out.

Let me add that the Lith-Ion batteries (the type that most modern laptops use) degrade with use and time.  Their cycle in the student pool is about 10-11 months until approximate end of life (your personal laptop should be about 1.5-2 years), with some variance on how much use they get.  In the Library the laptops have been checked out over 43,000 times since the start of Fall quarter.

With such heavy usage, at about th 5-6 month point some of the batteries become ureliable.  At the Library (and it may be true other places) they allow you to check out a cord as well if you want, just to be safe.

Still, I'll give the advice I always give, since you can never really know when something will go awry use the gamer's SESO principle - Save Early Save Often.