Miscellaneous laptop discussions : Extending the life of my laptop's battery
- 3/20/09 3:10 PM
Different strokes for different batteries.
by TerryMZM - 3/14/09 12:50 PM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The best way to keep life in a Lithium Ion battery is to only discharge it to around 80% of capacity in normal use. A large discharge may get the cell voltage below the safe operating limits imposed by the safety circuitry built into the battery. Many laptops have a "battery gauge" built into them somewhere (an F button, or a keystroke combination of some kind). Pay close attention to the reading and don't continue to use the laptop with the gauge almost at zero. The exact number of hours of use will vary with the number of battery cells, the type of use and the laptop itself. Leaving the laptop plugged in will not hurt a Li-Ion battery if the charging circuitry is designed properly.
A Nickel-Cadmium battery is a horse of an entirly different color. You MUST cycle a Ni-Cad to FULL discharge on a regular basis, or it will greatly lose capacity. This is the "Memory Effect" everyone was talking about a few years back. Also, continuously charging a Ni-Cad will shorten it's life considerably.
A Nickel-MetalHydride battery has far less "Memory Effect", to the point of almost not being noticable. Ni-MH batteries also must hot be continuously charged however.
Lead-Acid (gel-cells) have no memory effect and can be charged continuously (with a proper charge circuit). The only problem with gel-cells is capacity. To get the same ampere-hours out of a gel-cell pack as a Li-Ion, the gel-cell would essentially convert your laptop into a desktop (unless you are a body builder!).
The best overall advice I can give ia read the instruction book.
Laptop Battery management.
by bill Kline - 3/14/09 12:58 PM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I've been using laptops as my main computer since 1999. I am about to learn how to manage them. When I took them out in the truck every day, and ran them nearly down, or ran them down and plugged them in in the truck, they worked 2 or 3 years. The one I use now stays on my desk most of the time, so is easy to keep plugged in. The first 6 months I had it, I kept it plugged in almost all the time, and by 6 months, it would last 10 minutes. I got the dealer to replace it, and they recommended that I should unplug it and run the battery almost all the way down at least once per week. So far, it appears to be working a lot better.
Extending the life of my laptop's battery
by adnpro - 3/14/09 2:06 PM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi Raji, it's recomended to use your laptop battery until 10% but never discharge it totally 0%, so at 10% you plug your laptop and charge it.
Try this
by Rontyne - 3/14/09 2:11 PM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I had much the same problem with Dell Inspiron machines - one of which is 8 years old.
IN the case of one, I found that fully discharging the battery worked wonders. (This is similar to vdieo recorder batteries and light batteries for those who make films: a full discharge is required or the battery will not be 'formatted' correctly for a replenishment).
IN the case of the other, Dell had designed it with a DVD slot whihc took another battery. Why haven't all manufacturers noticed and adopted this.
You may find that you can alter the settings so that the battery is solely engaged on the activity your specify: why exhaust the battery with all sorts of background programmes which you are not actually using? This includes e.g. writing docs,or drafts, offline, then only deploying your resources for the final upload/connection.
If you search on CNET you may find freeware which monitors your machine in this way, without your having to reconfigure settings every time.
As an absolute alternative, you may find a stand-alone battery replenishment system
Go to HP, too, as if you can dedminstrate that their original battery was not fit for purpose, and can prove you had to buy others, they may help with an upgrade or replacement.
Battery Life
by bruce.muller3 - 3/14/09 4:27 PM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Battery should be allowed to be fully discharged from time to time (say, weekly) and recharged. As far as possible the laptop should be set at low for processing and also the screen brightness also at low when power is not connected. On my Acer Extensa (1.5 years old with the original battery) the battery lasts 2 hours on full power but almost 4 hours on low power. Working on the computer while continuously connected does not matter as long as the battery is regularly discharged fully and recharged.
Extending the life of my laptop's battery
by mcdeng - 3/14/09 4:57 PM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have had two HP laptops and a Compaq and am fed up with the batteries in them. They have been left plugged in most of the time. OK so I killed the batteries that way - according to HP. The real problem is that in two of these computers, I put brand new OEM replacement batteries in them and they both failed to charge the batteries. HP told me in the first one that the battery charging circuit had died. I ended up replacing the computer and have had the same thing happen within a year to the new one. It's now outside warranty and I've resolved not to buy an HP or Compaq again.
Extending Batt Life
by Ap2099 - 3/14/09 5:27 PM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
One way to extend the battery life, is to charge it all the way. Then use it untill it "dies", do this abount 3 times. this will set your battery to fuly charged, each and every time,this will give you full use of the batteery evey time. And the best part is, it will exstend the battery life by 40%.
Extending the life
by pmed60 - 3/14/09 7:45 PM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I do not think you can extend the life of a battery you purchased by freezing or some other method, but it should have a general number of charges it's maunfactured for i.e. over 1000. The nicads are bad about short charges,when the battery is not very low, to shorten the life by developing "memory" but nic metals should be fine for charging at anytime.
Life of Lithium Ion Batteries
by greyster - 3/14/09 8:07 PM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
You said you purchased an external battery pack to your computer and I assume it came with an external charger. Follow the manufacturers use requirements and charge requirements. I don't beleive any mfg of batteries signs up for more than one year warranty. If excersized properly it should last three times that. It's also a complex chemistry ...
Room temperature is what these devices are designed around, Don't subject to high heat. ie leaving your laptop in the car while shopping in Arizona. It is not easy to say ...just don't use your computer alot...but that is obviously not the answer,
Extending life of my laptop's battery
by caraj - 3/15/09 3:47 AM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Raji:
Your original battery likely had one of 4 causes:
1. A bad original battery – battery doesn’t charge.
2. A bad laptop battery charger – doesn’t charge battery. Charge rate always = 0.
3. The lap top battery charger doesn’t turn off when the battery is fully charged. Charge rate not = 0 when battery fully charged.
4. Bad battery connection( broken wire or bad battery contacts).
Your original HP guarantee covered items 1 through 4. If you have a guarantee extension these items are still covered.
Many storage batteries give the longest life if you use most of the charge say 80 or 90% before you recharge them.
Needed laptop use schedule may make this unfeasable.
I have 2 laptops. One has lost 3.5% of its charge capacity over 6 months, the other lost 25% charge capacity over 3 years.
My schedule prevents the batteries from being charged in the above way - but the batteries are performing well.
You have fixed cause 1. – bad battery.
Get BatteryBar (free) from http://osirisdevelopment.com/. It monitors Percent charged, Battery Capacity(milliwatt-hours,
charge rate, Battery Wear % of lost battery capacity and other values.
Monitor for 2., 3., and 4. If the % charged can’t approximate 100% or the charge rate is not 0 when fully charged bring the
Laptop in for charger repair.
GOOD LUCK,
John
Heat is the main enemy of laptop batteries
by David Blaikie - 3/15/09 11:29 AM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Heat is the main factor in accelerating the ageing process of laptop batteries.
So its best to charge the battery when its cold and the laptop is off.
Its also best to discharge the battery by using the laptop and not simultaneously charge it; as this will generate excessive heat in the battery.
When you laptop is working very hard (video editing for example) and the internal cooling fan starts cranking up then consider taking a break from you laptop because the the battery will also start heating up.
I'm a fan of charging my laptop to 100% switched off or asleep and then using the laptop right down to about 5% before fully recharging. However this is more for the benefit of the metering circuitry than the life of the battery.
Just for the record. My Black 2.2GHz Macbook is 18 months old. The battery has been power cycled 445 times and holds 4937 mAh or 98.3% of original rated capacity. A full charge gives me 4-5 hours use.
I am however dreading buying a replacement battery due to the crazy cost.
Keep your cool, look after battery.
extend battery life
by emgreene - 3/15/09 2:31 PM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
every one in a while let the battery run down before recharging it.
battery life...
by laryacan - 3/15/09 3:24 PM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If you are having problems with short battery life.. consider draining your battery down more and more often.
Larry
Laptop battery life
by mikeyd10 - 3/15/09 6:17 PM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
To help extend battery life, after charging the battery,either remove the power cable from the laptop or remove the battery from the computer. This will avoid overcharging the battery. Also, don't expose the battery to high heat.
lithium: keep cool and medium charged
by dre belgium - 3/16/09 3:50 AM In reply to: Extending the life of my laptop's battery by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Lithium cells of any kind (Li-ion and others) don't like to get fully discharged. But your laptop won't allow them to: it will switch off before the cells are too close to 'empty'. Still it is best to avoid to frequently discharge them completely until the computer shuts down. Charge them as soon as you get the chance. Now on the other hand, the cells don't like being stored with a full charge too, and certainly when the temperature is high (like in a car). Now, that is what happens all the time in laptops: they run quite warm, and when the mains is plugged in, the batteries are completely full most of the time. This is not ideal and shortens the lifetime of the battery. Some say 2-3 year is what you can expect this way and no more. They advise to remove the batteries from the laptop when continuously using the mains power, and place them back when you need to travel. This will certainly increase lifetime, especially when you store them at room temperature and only 60...90% full. (certainly don't store them empty, like you should do with Nickel Cadmium cells). Of course, this won't make life easy, isn't it...
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