Miscellaneous laptop discussions : The care and keeping of laptops and batteries
The care and keeping of laptops and batteries
by msk6261 - 1/2/07 9:57 AMCan you settle a dispute and dispell some myths regarding the best treatment for laptops and batteries:
1. It is recommended to leave desktop CPU's running and to only shut it down/reboot once or twice a week. Is it the same for a notebook?
I usually shot off the desktop monitor when I leave.......Is the life of the laptop monitor shortened when it's on all the time?
How about the fact that the fan is running nonstop? What the best care for the longevity of this portable computer?
2. Does it damage a the computer in any way when you shut the lid during the running of a program? What's the difference between "Sleep" and "Hibernate"? Do you mess up a program to leave it running?
3. Do you destroy the "memory life" of a rechargable battery when you leave it plugged in all the time? Is it best to let the battery drain and recharge on a regular basis? Is it OK to almost always have the notebook plugged in? What is the best practice for keeping the longevity of the battery time and overall battery life?
In this forum...
by R. Proffitt
- 1/2/07 11:00 AM
In reply to: The care and keeping of laptops and batteries by msk6261
It was discussed at length and using HP and battery university we agreed (?) that you can vary the life of the battery by about 10% by using it as you wish to storing it.
As to memory effects, that depends on the battery technology but NiCAD made this famous and even if LiON doesn't have it people still will ask if it does. Amazing how that lives on.
Given the 10% extra life why would I do anything for just two more months of battery life? If you've looked you see the usual 500 charges or 18 month lifespan. Maybe we get more but that's the specs.
Bob
"Do you mess up a program to leave it running?" = Only bad..
by R. Proffitt - 1/2/07 11:02 AM
In reply to: The care and keeping of laptops and batteries by msk6261
That one is easy. Only bad programs can't survive this.
"I usually shot off the desktop monitor when I leave"
While Texans are known to do that, it's fairly expensive.
Bob
OOOPPPSS!........I meant "shut" off the monitor.......
by msk6261 - 1/2/07 3:00 PM In reply to: "Do you mess up a program to leave it running?" = Only bad.. by R. Proffitt
Sorry for the typo! Bad keyboard...bad bad keyboard!
I left that for others to comment on but...
by R. Proffitt - 1/2/07 3:08 PM
In reply to: OOOPPPSS!........I meant "shut" off the monitor....... by msk6261
My laptop display goes dark in just 5 minutes. It's a power play item. Exchange of electrons is reduced and I get more battery time.
Think it over. Since we only get (by spec) some 500 charges (a long discussion could erupt here) then the more time we get off each charge the longer the battery life is. And I'll skip defining what a "charge" is. Battery U and HP defined that so I'd rather take the shortcut to the 10% answer.
Bob
Laptop Batteries, etc.
by Zouch - 1/5/07 5:40 PM In reply to: The care and keeping of laptops and batteries by msk6261Hi msk6261 - Let's have a go at this. Note, subjective personal experience reply - your mileage may vary!
1. It is recommended to leave desktop CPU's running and to only shut it down/reboot once or twice a week. Is it the same for a notebook?
A. I'm not sure this is "recommended" any more. It is true that in days past, damaging electrical spikes could result from powering off and on but today's machines are much more resilient. And at a typical 3-400w, the electricity is significant.
I usually shot off the desktop monitor when I leave.......Is the life of the laptop monitor shortened when it's on all the time?
A. CRT are power hogs - it's good practice to turn them off when not in use. LCDs take around one tenth the power, so that is less significant. I'd recommend using the power saving algorithms standard in laptop BIOS and operating systems to turn the LCD off after an appropriate time interval of non use.
How about the fact that the fan is running nonstop? What the best care for the longevity of this portable computer?
A. I'd be surprised if the fan was running non-stop - usually, they kick in at a temperature threshold and shut off again once the machine is cool. Couple of things to think about - fan bearings don't last forever and replacement is often a specialist job and secondly, if the machine is in a dusty atmosphere or worse, sitting on a fabric cover, the fan will ingest dust and eventually clog it or the bearings. Let the laptop drop into sleep or hibernate mode and these problems go away - or just shut it down when not in use.
2. Does it damage a the computer in any way when you shut the lid during the running of a program? What's the difference between "Sleep" and "Hibernate"? Do you mess up a program to leave it running?
A. Most modern software is unaffected by this - power isn't shut off immediately the lid is closed, the switch signals the operating system to put the machine to sleep/standby. Most modern operating systems with APCI support will wait for active I/O to complete, suspend running programs and then put the machine in standby.
Standby/sleep mode suspends the operation of the machine but leaves all the contents of memory intact. It has a small power drain to maintain the integrity of the system and memory. On restart, the machine returns to full power mode and resumes execution.
Hibernate mode copies the contents of memory and system status to the hard disk and then shuts the machine down. On restart, the machine powers up, reloads all the system status and memory from the hard disk and resumes execution.
3. Do you destroy the "memory life" of a rechargable battery when you leave it plugged in all the time? Is it best to let the battery drain and recharge on a regular basis? Is it OK to almost always have the notebook plugged in? What is the best practice for keeping the longevity of the battery time and overall battery life?
A. Depends on the battery and design of the machine. As Bob pointed out, the NiCad battery memory issue lives on but when did you last see a NiCad battery in a laptop? Lithium Ion batteries do not (generalization) have memory effects.
Some machines are designed to have their power leads plugged in all the time, others are not. My son has a Toshiba Satellite A60 (Pentium 4 3.0 GHz), which uses a LiIon battery, but the instruction manual recommends running on battery until the low charge warning appears and then plug in the power cord. It says (how do you check?) that leaving the power cord in all the time will shorten the battery life.
My Samsung X15 Centrino is designed to have the power cord plugged in whenever available and the manual recommends that. In fact, running on mains power, the CPU is 1.5 GHz but on battery, the speed drops to 500 MHz and the screen dims from 75% brightness to 12.5% (Centrino standard to prolong battery charge).
Hope this helps.
Quick short answers
by Ryo Hazuki - 1/13/07 5:54 PM In reply to: The care and keeping of laptops and batteries by msk62611. No.
2. No. Hibernate saves (even) more power. Yes.
3. Only if it is NiCAD. Only with NiCAD. Yes. Treat it well (physically).
Answer to Q3
by reduct101 - 1/15/07 10:53 AM In reply to: The care and keeping of laptops and batteries by msk6261It depends what you mean by "memory life". There are two types of memory associated with notebook batteries:
a) the type of memory that prevents a battery from physically taking charge
b) the "digital memory" deterioration that causes notebooks' charge level calibration to get progressively less and less accurate
Type a) affects only NiMh/NiCd battery types, whereas type b) affects pretty much all battery types where the laptop monitors charge levels - including those of Li-on batteries.
The resulting effect of digital memory loss is that your notebook's power meter misreads the charge level in the battery, reporting the wrong % charge remaining figure to you in your taskbar and, reporting the same to your power management program!
Over time this inaccuracy may get greater until eventually your battery is virtually useless.
Note that some notebook manufacturers provide better power mangement than others: Dell, IBM/Lenovo and Toshiba seemed to suffer a great deal from this problem. They seem to all have one thing in common: once the battery is charged they don't stop charging and switch to AC power. Instead, they continue to run off battery power while charging, resulting in continuous charge/discharge of the battery. This is exceptionally bad as far as power meter calibration goes! There are dozens of Thinkpads owned by my employer that have very little battery life as a result of this flip-flopping of charge/discharge. You can identify this problem if your power meter reports 100%, 99%, 100%, 99%, 98%, 99%, 100% etc. over a period of just a few minutes.
Some laptops will respond to the detection of a battery becoming fully charged by cutting off charging and running from AC while plugged in. This will help to extend the life of the battery (yes, Li-Ons too, they have a limited number of full discharges during their lifetime).
Even if your laptop manages charging better, you will still find your power meter goes out of calibration over time. Although it is not recommended to regularly fully discharge your battery, you should periodically fully discharge it and fully charge it (don't leave the battery for an extended period with no charge in it). This will allow proper calibration of the power management program and ensure that the power meter gives a more accurate reading. It is important to do this whenever you notice a deterioration in the normal operating time of your battery - if you leave it too late then you will never get close to the times you once did. Note: this has nothing to do with Ni-MH/Ni-Cd battery memory loss! Although it will work for them too, for a different reason.
For Mac users:
OS 9 and OS X comes with a digital memory reset function to get around the calibration problem (reset NVRAM or something like that). Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be such a utility available from other laptop manufacturers 
You can read everything you need to know about (li-on) battery care at:
www.rm.com/_RMVirtual/Media/Downloads/Lithium_Ion_Batteries_Care.doc
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
also try:
http://monkeyfilter.com/link.php/7094
http://www.laptop-battery.org/batterytips.html
and http://www.macintouch.com/laptopbatt.html (for Mac users)
Hope this helps.
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