Laptop battery advice

[Bobby]

What is the best way to use a new laptop?

The manufacturer points out that the battery has a limited number of
recharge cycles and recommends that I fully charge and discharge the battery
every time I use it - but that's not practical.

Most likely I will use the battery for an hour or two and then connect it to
the mains supply. Is that bad for the battery?

Also, what sort of activity drains the battery most? Is there a website
which lists this?

Cheers.

Bobby

 

[Guy Fawkes]

What is the best way to use a new laptop?

The manufacturer points out that the battery has a limited number of
recharge cycles and recommends that I fully charge and discharge the
battery every time I use it - but that's not practical.

Most likely I will use the battery for an hour or two and then connect it
to the mains supply. Is that bad for the battery?

Also, what sort of activity drains the battery most? Is there a website
which lists this?

Cheers.

Bobby

http://www.surfbaud.co.uk/knowledgebase/
disclaimer, my site so I'm biased.

--
Lithium ion internal and external batteries.
Internal from £30 External from £75 (trade)
All batteries factory new and guaranteed.
http://www.surfbaud.co.uk/
e-mail (e-mail address removed) (www.rot13.com)

 

[Bobby]

Thanks for the link. I've bookmarked your site. Some excellent advice - and
good prices!

But it seems to me (from reading your site) that Li-ion batteries have a
limited life (36 months) so it the charge-discharge cycle isn't very
important since the battery will wither before any bad charging practices
have an affect. Is that the case? If not, why not?

Cheers.

Bobby

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

What is the best way to use a new laptop?

The manufacturer points out that the battery has a limited number of
recharge cycles and recommends that I fully charge and discharge the battery
every time I use it - but that's not practical.

Most likely I will use the battery for an hour or two and then connect it to
the mains supply. Is that bad for the battery?

Also, what sort of activity drains the battery most? Is there a website
which lists this?

Cheers.

Bobby

My company's laptop batteries are invariably dead after 2 .. 3 years.
I'm talking about a few dozen laptops. My own laptop batteries
last more than 5 years (talking about 3 laptops). I run my laptops
off the mains most of the time, with the battery removed, and give
the batteries a discharge/charge cycle about once every month.
They are Lithium-Ion batteries.

I'm quite aware that three is a very small number on which to draw
generalised conclusions.

 

[Guy Fawkes]

Thanks for the link. I've bookmarked your site. Some excellent advice -
and good prices!

But it seems to me (from reading your site) that Li-ion batteries have a
limited life (36 months) so it the charge-discharge cycle isn't very
important since the battery will wither before any bad charging practices
have an affect. Is that the case? If not, why not?

the chemical compounds that make up a cell start decaying slowly from the
moment they are made, the 36 months is a figure I have come up with based
on experience.

charge / discharge cycles are also a decaying process, not a binary event,
eg at x cycles suddenly no more power, it more like something wearing out
when used hard, maybe emergency stops from 70 mph on a set of tyres

if you get 500 full charge/discharge cycles per battery most users are only
going to do a full cycle twice a week, so five years of charge discharge,
so that level of use isn't likely to kill the battery early.

discharge / charge full twice a day (it's possible, we have several
customers who fully discharge / charged > once a day 6 days a week who now
run off our universal external batteries) and the cycles kill the battery
in about nine monthd, long before the ageing process.

there are some analogies to car tyres, fit 4 new one and

1/ they will age, crack and rot in the garage even if you do zero miles,
eventually
2/ they will die very very quickly if you wheelspin away from one set of
lights and screech to a halt at the next
3/ they will last longest if used regularly, carefully, sensitively.

HTH etc


--
Lithium ion internal and external batteries.
Internal from £30 External from £75 (trade)
All batteries factory new and guaranteed.
http://www.surfbaud.co.uk/
e-mail (e-mail address removed) (www.rot13.com)

 

[JF]

X-No-Archive: yes

Also, what sort of activity drains the battery most? Is there a website
which lists this?

Loading and running Windows! I use a DOS-based word-processor for using
my laptop on the move when there isn't a handy power station outlet
socket to hand. Not entering WIN at the prompt means that a charge will
last several days instead of several hours. I think we've become so
obsessed with Windows sodware that we've forgotten what excellent
non-Windows software there is around. I even found USB2 drivers on the
Jumbo website, and I use Goldenhawk's (Jeff Jarold) DVD/RW/CD software
to write CD-ROMs.

 

[Dennis Pogson]

X-No-Archive: yes


Loading and running Windows! I use a DOS-based word-processor for
using my laptop on the move when there isn't a handy power station
outlet socket to hand. Not entering WIN at the prompt means that a
charge will last several days instead of several hours. I think we've
become so obsessed with Windows sodware that we've forgotten what
excellent non-Windows software there is around. I even found USB2
drivers on the Jumbo website, and I use Goldenhawk's (Jeff Jarold)
DVD/RW/CD software to write CD-ROMs.

--
James Follett. Novelist. (G1LXP)
http://www.jamesfollett.dswilliams.co.uk "Return of the Eagles", the
last book in James Follett's 'Eagles' trilogy published by Severn
House, London & New York, Dec 2004

True, Word for Dos is almost as good as Winword once you master the command
structure, and loading it is so quick you can have a letter typed whilst
WinXP is booting!

Dennis.

 

[JANA]

These batteries will last about 3 years average. The older type NiCads had
memory problems. It is good to run down the battery every number of months,
but it is not critical as with the early generation of batteries. I would
not be overly worried about this.

--

JANA
_____


What is the best way to use a new laptop?

The manufacturer points out that the battery has a limited number of
recharge cycles and recommends that I fully charge and discharge the battery
every time I use it - but that's not practical.

Most likely I will use the battery for an hour or two and then connect it to
the mains supply. Is that bad for the battery?

Also, what sort of activity drains the battery most? Is there a website
which lists this?

Cheers.

Bobby

 

[Roger Hunt]

X-No-Archive: yes


Loading and running Windows! I use a DOS-based word-processor for using
my laptop on the move when there isn't a handy power station outlet
socket to hand. Not entering WIN at the prompt means that a charge will
last several days instead of several hours. I think we've become so
obsessed with Windows sodware that we've forgotten what excellent
non-Windows software there is around. I even found USB2 drivers on the
Jumbo website, and I use Goldenhawk's (Jeff Jarold) DVD/RW/CD software
to write CD-ROMs.

Do you have a link for this Jumbo website? My Googling overwhelmed me!

Regards

 

[JF]

Do you have a link for this Jumbo website? My Googling overwhelmed me!

Apologies. It's http://www.jumbo.com/

I haven't looked at it for some time. There were pages of DOS drivers.

 

[Roger Hunt]

Apologies. It's http://www.jumbo.com/

I haven't looked at it for some time. There were pages of DOS drivers.

I must confess that I was too dim to try typing in www.jumbo.com!
Hey-ho.
Thanks for that - always good to have these resources handy.