Battery / mains question

whitecrook

whitecrook

whitecrook

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Joined
22 Aug 2005
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Hi all

Got an X31 laptop and am pretty happy with it, thinkpads really are pretty awesome. And trackpoints > trackpads :)

Anyway the battery life is great - over 4 hours from max charge (wifi off) and was wondering how best to car for the battery or what other people do.


Do i/Should I :

1. Plug into mains anytime I like, regardless of remaining battery life?


2. If using battery for any length of time, continue to use the battery until ~10% (the pop up tells me to plug into ac mains immedietly)?

3. ever run the battery till the laptop dies - (why?)

4. just do what ever I like - the battery will last a couple of years regardless?

5. Avoid using the battery at any oppurtunity, if mains AC is available?


Thanks all just looking for views / best practice to follow.


Cheers
 
1. no
2. sure
3. sure (causes no harm, batteries these days dont have memory so you dont need to do this like you did in the way back when days.)
4. not even remotely
5. most definately

Avoid heat, as this kills batteries quicker (usually when charging and using same time, or trickle charging), recharge as little as possible, as batteries both degrade over time and with recharge cycles, even greater with heat.

The charger switches off/ stops charging when battery is at 100% then starts again when this drops, so this subtracts from your remaining recharge cycles, battery will need to be changed after 1-1.5 years depending on usage.

Aso 4 hrs without wifi is not that good, I get roughly that with my laptop in my sig on power save mode wifi off brightness at lowest, with wifi and power save brightness at lowest I get 3hrs solid, with everything maxed approx 1.5hrs (gaming).
 
Interesting stuff. So is it actually bad for a battery to recharge it from say 90%, or is it just that a recharge cycle has been wasted?
 
mm. t bh I have never timed it, but i think it's roughly 4 hours, I just go by the meter, although I noticed 2 the other day and 1 read 27 minutes, and the other read 1:30. When fully charged the one on the right reads 5:47 left, the main one i use reads 4:30 ish left... how to calibrate the meters?




Good tip about using (or not) the lappy while charging.

And if I am to use AC, should I remove the battery? If the battery drops to 99% then I plug in AC, does this count as a recharge cycle?


i.e. point no5, should I avoid switching the laptop on and while-its-booting, finding and pluggin in the AC adaptor, then when boot up or just logging in, pluggin in th AC. is that bad mmm k?

regards,
 
are you sure about using as few charges as possible? because all li-ion batterys ive worked with (which is what the laptops ive looked at use) prefer to be charged whenever, no matter what the current charge is. Also with Li-ion, its dangerous to drain all the charge, or overcharge (decent batterys wont allow either to happen though).
 
Better to take the battery out, if you have an AC source and battery is fully charged, and while you can recharge a battery at any point it does not do good necessarily for the life of the battery. Its not like times of old where if you recharged at a certain point the battery too that point as 0% and would only charge from there to 100%.

Have a read over here, these guys have been doing this for a while so should have better insight than me http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=91846&highlight=battery#post1696311
 
toms hardware has a great article on li-ion batterys, and how they should be used/mainated: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/laptops-lithium-ion-batteries,review-2393.html

A couple point it mentions is that recharging from say 90% capacity to 100% does NOT count as a cycle of the batterys total cycles. A cycle counts as 100% overal, so a charge from 0 to 100, or 5 chargers of 80 to 100, all equals 1 cycle.

On top of this, it mentions that due to the safety features in the li-ion batterys, when the battery is fully charged it automatical disconects the charger from charging itself. This means that you can safely have the battery connected to the laptop while it has a power lead plugged in, if the battery needs charging itll get charged, when its full the power lead will ONLY supply power to the laptop directly, and only give power to the battery if for some reason that drops down and requires charging again.
 
1. Plug into mains anytime I like, regardless of remaining battery life?
Yes. Charge the battery whenever you can from whatever charge it's on. If leaving for a long period of time, leave the battery at ~40% charge.

2. If using battery for any length of time, continue to use the battery until ~10% (the pop up tells me to plug into ac mains immedietly)?
Plug into the mains if you can once the battery reaches around 20%.

3. ever run the battery till the laptop dies - (why?)
No. LiPo and Li-Ion batteries hate being run flat. They have built in protection systems, but try and avoid ever going below 5% if possible.

4. just do what ever I like - the battery will last a couple of years regardless?
They are fairly robust, but there are things you can do to make it last longer.

5. Avoid using the battery at any oppurtunity, if mains AC is available?
No. Use the battery. If you want to run for a long time on AC power, take the battery out once it has fully charged. Lithium chemical batteries are susceptible to damage from heat.

That's how I treat my batteries and they've all lasted a long time and never given my any problems. That includes phone, MP3 player and two laptops.

Jon
 
Also, once a month you should use the battery down to around 5% (but no lower) then do a full charge to 100%, according to tomshardware this helps callibrate some of the safety protection stuff in the battery.
 
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