Preseving laptop battery

[Handruin]

What are the general thoughts about keeping a new laptop battery healthy. I've been using this new machine mainly on AC power and only a few times off of the battery so far and been wondering what's good and bad for the battery.

Is it bad for the health of the battery to run it all the way down or is it worse to get it 30-50% down before recharging? Is it bad to run it on AC power all day while leaving the battery in? I'm assuming once charged that it won't charge any more.

 

[Stereodude]

You want to avoid complete cycles on Li-Ion batteries. It's worse to let it get to 0% and then recharge it than to recharge it at 50%. Practically speaking Li-Ion batteries should be charged as often as possible.

Some new computers have a "battery saver" option to stop charging them at 80%. This is better for the battery than keeping it at 100% all the time. My Samsung N120 has this feature.

 

[Handruin]

I'll have to look for a max charge option. The battery is on a Lenovo T500. You said that it's best to be charged as often as possible, but just not to 100%? Thanks for the feedback, that's good to know about minimizing how often I let it get to empty.

 

[Handruin]

Looks like I have a similar feature as your notebook. I'll try setting it to only start charging when the battery is at 85% and stop at 90%.

 

[Stereodude]

You said that it's best to be charged as often as possible, but just not to 100%?

Damage to the battery's Li-Ion cells occurs at the ends of the spectrum. If you over charge or undercharge them you can damage the cells. All modern devices have charge controllers to prevent that from happening. Still limiting the max charge will prolong the life of the cells in the battery, but obviously that reduces the available battery life when you grab it and head out. For that reason it's not necessarily a bad thing to let the battery charge up all the way.

You definitely don't want to let a Li-Ion battery sit discharged. If left long enough they will self discharge below the safe minimum voltage for the cells and they could explode or catch fire when eventually recharged. The proper long term storage level is 80%.

 

[LunarMist]

My notebook starts charging only below 90%. There are no options to modify it.

 

[ddrueding]

Looks like I have a similar feature as your notebook. I'll try setting it to only start charging when the battery is at 85% and stop at 90%.

That is a cool screen, is it part of Vista? I just installed 7 RC onto my R2Hv, I'll look for something similar.

 

[Howell]

Looks like I have a similar feature as your notebook. I'll try setting it to only start charging when the battery is at 85% and stop at 90%.

I have the same tool and I just leave it where you have it in the picture. And I let it tell me when to do a battery reset.

 

[udaman]

Interesting link

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/6008

Lampe-Onnerud’s batteries don’t dramatically lose power in their first six months or so and thus won’t need to be replaced as quickly; they are designed to operate at a minimum of 80 *percent capacity for three years, the life of a typical laptop computer. After three years of regular use, a traditional lithium-ion computer battery essentially has no capacity left; after a year of typical use, users will find that a battery that once had a 4-hour capacity now has a 2-hour one.

Was a link I lost to an electronics engineering site/magazine, (or can't easily find in my older OSX partition/browser bookmarks) when CPF banned me, Saft engineer speaking of 18650 cylindrical laptop batteries in comparison to auto/industrial Li-Ion batteries. Laptop/consumer Li-Ion batteries being commodity items where not designed to last more than a few years, whereas the more expensive industrial grade could last for up to a decade, and thousands of charges...he said.

I still have pretty decent runtime on my 8+ yr old, early gen Li-Ion cell phone battery, capacity is probably around 1/2 or less, but in theory it should be completely dead by now. No laptop 18650 cells would last that long.

 

[udaman]

1. 1. The administrator has specified that you can only edit messages for 5 minutes after you have posted. This limit has expired, so you must contact the administrator to make alterations on your message.

Well at least I did not hit the submit button more than once for a double post. Site is kind of sluggish right now.

Meant to edit in:

"or you could get a lighter, thinner, *better* 17in MBP, as compared to similar performance/spec'd Dell 17in laptop...*and* get a larger capacity/longer runtime Li-Poly battery that is supposed to be able to recharge 800+ times, negating the need for a replacement, through the life the normal laptop user keeps their computer.

 

[Stereodude]

You got banned from CPF? I couldn't imagine why...

 

[Handruin]

That is a cool screen, is it part of Vista? I just installed 7 RC onto my R2Hv, I'll look for something similar.

No, it comes as part of the power management software suite for Lenovo. Vista might have something built in, but I have no idea where.

 

[LunarMist]

You got banned from CPF? I couldn't imagine why...

:lol: Probably a post of something off topic.

 

[LunarMist]

No, it comes as part of the power management software suite for Lenovo. Vista might have something built in, but I have no idea where.

Oh. I have a Japanese laptop computer, not a Chinese one. They probably have different ideas on battery software/hardware, or perhaps it is the age (mine is 1 year old).

 

[Handruin]

Not really sure why that matters. IBM probably wrote the software...does that matter that I have a Chinese-built computer?

 

[LOST6200]

Untilamately it is hopless. Most of my notebook s have deaded or weak batteries aftre affew years no mattrer what. 3rd paqrty batts tend to be crap.

My waork lappy only runs about 1 hour, but thy refuse to replace batteries paxck.

 

[Handruin]

My work laptop battery lasts maybe 5-10 minutes which is annoying, but it's over 5 years old. At least I have a decent idea how to help keep this battery strong.

 

[Stereodude]

My work laptop battery lasts maybe 5-10 minutes which is annoying, but it's over 5 years old.

That's what ebay is for.

 

[Handruin]

Rather than me spend on ebay, that's why work should replace my 5+ year old now-useless laptop that is too slow because of all the security, anti-virus, anti-spyware crap they put on the machine. When i turn it on, I honestly can't do anything (such as open a web browser or launch outlook) productive for a good 10-15 minutes while anti virus scans at high priority. Despite my best efforts I can't change the priority because they lock everyone out, nor can I kill the task or disable it. I'm not annoyed or anything.

 

[LunarMist]

I have a similar problem, but the notebook is almost 4 years old. Soon we will get new ones with Vista and Office 2007. :sad: I'd so much prefer a desktop, but all dept. managers must have notebooks.

 

[timwhit]

Rather than me spend on ebay, that's why work should replace my 5+ year old now-useless laptop that is too slow because of all the security, anti-virus, anti-spyware crap they put on the machine. When i turn it on, I honestly can't do anything (such as open a web browser or launch outlook) productive for a good 10-15 minutes while anti virus scans at high priority. Despite my best efforts I can't change the priority because they lock everyone out, nor can I kill the task or disable it. I'm not annoyed or anything.

Do you have admin rights on it?

I work in the IT department so I have admin rights, which is nice to be able to disable services that annoy me.

 

[Mercutio]

I usually run my batteries down to about 25% charge before I plug in. If I know I'm going to be operating on AC for a while I pull the battery completely.

 

[Handruin]

Do you have admin rights on it?

I work in the IT department so I have admin rights, which is nice to be able to disable services that annoy me.

I thought I did. When I try to end processes or stop services I'm denied access. 've tried a variety of different ways to end the processes but can't seem to get them to stop. I think some of that is from the security software they install.

I've ben trying to get them to help me run our corporate VM image on my personal laptop since it has a lot more power, but they say they won't support a VM on it which is rubbish.

 

[Mercutio]

And kind of ironic, too, given who you work for.

 

[sechs]

Looks like I have a similar feature as your notebook. I'll try setting it to only start charging when the battery is at 85% and stop at 90%.

I've always set clients' laptops to optimize for battery life, and only one ever had problems.

That one broke his AC adapter, so it had an intermittent connection, and procrastinated on getting a replacement (free, under warranty, I might add). Probably ran the battery through a couple thousand recharge cycles in a few months, eventually reducing its ability to hold a charge. After it got down to fifteen minutes on battery, he ended up having to pay for a replacement battery, since it had to be bog dead to be replaced under warranty.