When To Charge The Battery Of A Notebook ?

[miodo2009]

I always charge the battery while using my notebook. Is this correct or is it better to charge when not using the notebook ?

[longball53098]

IMHO it's not the method of charging but the need to deplete the battery first. Some people leave the laptop plugged in with the power supply constantly charging the battery and never deplete the battery. The battery needs to be exercised regularly and run down and then recharged to 100 percent.

Charging whether the laptop is on or off should not matter.

[Beggar]

If you want to have your battery for a long time and use your notebook mostly without battery power then wrap it in paper and plastic and put it in the refrigerator (the battery). Batteries just die after a certain time. In cold environment you can slow this down. But of course in case of a power failure you might suffer a bit without this backup power. When you take out the battery of the refrigerator let it get warm before you take it out of the plastic. To wrap it in paper too avoids that the softener of the plastic bag reacts with the plastic of the battery.

The other enemies are chips in some batteries. They try to think. If they say the battery does not work anymore then it is like this. Charge/discharge it at least 2 times a year.

But anyhow - many notebooks today are such a scrap that the battery might be the only working thing left.

[filingaccount]

The tips above are incorrect for lithium-ion (and, more recently, lithium-polymer) batteries that are used in nearly every laptop manufactured in the last decade.

The “memory effect”, or the need to “refresh” or “deep-cycle” the battery by completely discharging before recharging, is stale knowledge from the time of NiCad and NiMH batteries. Lithium-ion batteries don’t suffer from the memory effect.

It’s also not bad to leave your laptop plugged in. In fact, it’s a good thing to keep it plugged in whenever you don’t need to be running on battery power.

Due to their chemistry, their capacity slowly diminishes with age. Laptop batteries usually lose most of their useful capacity 2-3 years after manufacture (not initial use).

If you use the laptop on battery power a lot, the battery lifespan will be shortened. This “wearing out” effect is much less severe than with older battery technologies, but is still present. This is why you should plug it in if it’s convenient.

When plugged in, the battery is not in use. The laptop’s power circuitry bypasses the battery unless it’s needed. Depending on how smart the charger is, it may occasionally poll and “top off” the battery if its charge decreases to a certain threshold below 100%, but this is rarely needed in practice.

Lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries have the lowest self-discharge rates of any common battery technology, estimated at less than 1% per month and difficult to distinguish from the loss of capacity with age.

A battery only has electrical potential. If no juice is flowing, no chemicals are reacting, and there's no point in refrigerating the battery. Quite the contrary--since refrigeration slows a reaction, the electricity won't be there when you want it.

Edited February 2, 2010 by filingaccount

[miodo2009]

The tips above are incorrect for lithium-ion (and, more recently, lithium-polymer) batteries that are used in nearly every laptop manufactured in the last decade.

The “memory effect”, or the need to “refresh” or “deep-cycle” the battery by completely discharging before recharging, is stale knowledge from the time of NiCad and NiMH batteries. Lithium-ion batteries don’t suffer from the memory effect.

It’s also not bad to leave your laptop plugged in. In fact, it’s a good thing to keep it plugged in whenever you don’t need to be running on battery power.

Due to their chemistry, their capacity slowly diminishes with age. Laptop batteries usually lose most of their useful capacity 2-3 years after manufacture (not initial use).

If you use the laptop on battery power a lot, the battery lifespan will be shortened. This “wearing out” effect is much less severe than with older battery technologies, but is still present. This is why you should plug it in if it’s convenient.

When plugged in, the battery is not in use. The laptop’s power circuitry bypasses the battery unless it’s needed. Depending on how smart the charger is, it may occasionally poll and “top off” the battery if its charge decreases to a certain threshold below 100%, but this is rarely needed in practice.

Lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries have the lowest self-discharge rates of any common battery technology, estimated at less than 1% per month and difficult to distinguish from the loss of capacity with age.

A battery only has electrical potential. If no juice is flowing, no chemicals are reacting, and there's no point in refrigerating the battery. Quite the contrary--since refrigeration slows a reaction, the electricity won't be there when you want it.

I'm not sure if it's cool to say "thank you", but thanks anyway !

[Beggar]

Lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries have the lowest self-discharge rates of any common battery technology, estimated at less than 1% per month and difficult to distinguish from the loss of capacity with age.

A battery only has electrical potential. If no juice is flowing, no chemicals are reacting, and there's no point in refrigerating the battery. Quite the contrary--since refrigeration slows a reaction, the electricity won't be there when you want it.

I did not mean to put it overnight in the fridge an take it out the next day. But if you do not need it for a long time it might be a good idea to keep it cool. My girlfriend and I have both a Sony video camera with expensive Sony batteries. Her 3 batteries died almost a year ago because she does not care and left them outside. Mine are as fresh as the Leo beer in the fridge. And those batteries are extremely expensive - so I care. All batteries were not used very much. Perhaps charged 2 times. They just expired.

[Thanh-BKK]

Hi.

I have spoken to a laptop repair professional recently regarding this exact issue - my boyfriend has a laptop which is about three years okld and the battery is dead, in such a way that when you turn it on within less than one minute (didn't even complete Windows boot) it will turn off again, however on AC it works fine - and says "battery fully charged".

The guy told me that those batteries have built-in circuitry which at times acts pretty much like a "life timer" - something many people suspect and all manufacturers deny, appears to be true. Batteries are rated to be discharged and recharged 400-500 times. If they reach that "goal" they refuse to charge - a new battery is needed (just like those ink cartridges that state "empty" after "x" amount of paper has gone through the printer - even if the cartridge is visibly still half full of ink).

What's the catch? Well, part-charging counts as one - every time the laptop (used or not) is connected to AC the counter in the battery advances by one. Hit "500" and end of life. They want to sell batteries, too.......

I don't know how much truth is in it but looking at how that laptop was used - not very often and rarely on battery, always plugged in - and the battery being dead after only three years gave me to think. For sure i'll run my own laptop on battery until it states "less than five minutes remaining" before i plug it in, and then i keep it plugged in until it is full.

Best regards.....

Thanh

[filingaccount]

@ Thanh-BKK

Just download Everest and look at the Battery wear level under "Power management". This will tell you how much remaining capacity your battery has.

There is no such thing as a charge x amount of times and we disable your battery. Batteries wear out over time. Simple.

Batteries start to degrade the moment they are manufactured due to the chemical nature of them. You will not be able to find any battery that keeps a charge 4 years on. Most batteries will last you about 2 years at decent charge. Yes, using and re-charging a battery increases the wear level, but there is absolutely no countdown device of any sort.

There are some heavy duty batteries or GEL batteries that would last a bit longer, but those are not available for laptops.

Oh, and you can debunk your own theory by simply wasting 500 minutes of your life.

Plug in until your battery is fully charged, unplug for 1 minute, plug back in... repeat. Within 8-9 hours, according to you, the battery would be "dead" and unusable. Allow me to

Edit: I wanted to add that battery wear is the single most critical failure point for solar power. If batteries lasted forever we all would be using solar power by now. Imagine a non-maintenance solar system. WOW! FABULOUS! FANTASTIC! CHEAP!

Oh and "battery manufacturers" consists of much more than brand name manufacturers. If there was a "turn off" switch in brand name batteries, then independent manufacturers and most notably ME would pounce on the change to produce non-expiring batteries. I would make a killing overnight!

And even more, if it was as simple as batteries has a turn off switch after x amount of charges, then why invest hundreds of millions developing better batteries using different chemical processes. Wouldn't it be simpler just to allow 600 charges instead of 500 and claim "better battery"?

Think before spreading conspiracy theories.... gullible people might actually believe that crap.

Edited February 3, 2010 by filingaccount

[Thanh-BKK]

Hi.

The person who told me about that makes a living by repairing broken laptops and selling new and second-hand spare parts. I know that guy and his shop for several years and was able to get parts there that were otherwise "no have" or even "no exist".

Additionally i know and have suffered from the same kind of "conspiracy" with inkjet cartridges, printers that flat refuse to print if the display says "ink empty" even though the (transparent!) cartridge is still about half full.

How come certain laptops, which are 10+ years old, still keep chugging while newer ones need a new battery every 2-3 years? One of my friends has one such dinosaur (Pentium 1!) that still works and holds charge on it's original battery. My boyfriend's battery is busted after 3 years of very little use and the battery has never been stored empty.

Also you can hardly compare Li-Ion laptop batteries with lead-acid batteries as used in solar power. Those are essentially the same as used in cars (if you are talking about real solar power, not small applications like calculators or watches). Here in Thailand they typically carry a six-month warranty and need to be replaced after 7 months (or 12 months and lasting 13, i went through 4 of them in as many years in the car and am on the 5th now in just over 3 years on the motorbike) while in Germany they have a 5-year warranty and typically last 7-8 years.... see something?

By the way i also still have my very first mobile phone from 1997, it, too, still works fine with it's original battery. My newer phones barely get 2 years out of a battery, too......

Best regards.....

Thanh

[Beggar]

I have the same information Thanh-BKK has. (Honest) batteries do not need a chip. But the chip enables the producer to control the battery and in addition avoid fake batteries as good as possible. Not so much for computers but for cameras for instance batteries are a big business. 1 Sony battery costs about 5000 Baht for my video camera. It is a bit like the ink for the printers. Those new batteries start to expire as soon as they are produced. So far I never found an expiration date on one of them. In the case of my girlfriend and her video camera we lost about 15000 Baht for nothing (about 3 years old when the batteries stopped to work). I am not sure how much longer my batteries from the fridge will hold.

[filingaccount]

I promise I will reply to you comprehensively soon. I'm running low on "charge" today....

Just know that inkjet cartridges and batteries produces by my suppliers are two very different things. I don't know how you even can begin to compare two entirely different things. Apples vs. Oranges....

And "someone who sells second hand equipment" is hardly an authority on engineering & production of batteries.

Oh and in the meantime, look at the battery your old phone has and compare it to the specs of the new battery. Tell me what you find out....

[Thanh-BKK]

Good morning.

The old phone has a Ni-MH battery with 6 Volts 1,000 mAh, the newer ones all are Li-Ion 3.7 Volts and variable mAh (550 to 1,200 as i have a whole bunch of phones).

If you are going to tell me "that old technology is better than the new one" then i'll ask you "why don't they continue to use the old one"..?

And i believe someone who makes a living by selling second-hand equipment more than someone who makes a living by manufacturing/selling new equipment and obviously has vested interest in such equipment being as short-lived as legally possible for a quick turnaround.

I can show you tons of such equipment that out-lived it's warranty period by mere days (mechanical clock, certainly no chip in there) to a few weeks (dozens of optical drives, both my own as well as customers', batteries, mobile phones and chargers) to a few months (various mainboards, UPS units (NOT their batteries!) and other electronics). Strangely at the same time identical equipment that is very old still keeps on going (have another mechanical clock from the 50's which runs as precise as a Quartz clock, also got a quad-speed CD drive from 1996 or so that is my favourite "test drive" because it can read even heavily scratched CD's and then there are those 1999 computers at my office that refuse to die, bad voltage and all...)

If you manufacture batteries, make one with 90's technology and i'll buy it.

Best regards.....

Thanh

Edited February 4, 2010 by Thanh-BKK

[Beggar]

Just know that inkjet cartridges and batteries produces by my suppliers are two very different things. I don't know how you even can begin to compare two entirely different things. Apples vs. Oranges....

They sell you the video camera with a pretty small battery. So you will have to buy a new one. They are extremely expensive. There are cheap fakes on the market. But my batteries have a chip inside. If you take a fake one without a chip/working chip you get an error message. On top of this they change the battery design often so that you cannot use them anymore when you buy a new camera. But what I did not expect that they expire so quick. I had the old batteries with memory effect problems for my old Panasonic camera. The camera is broken but the (fake) batteries were still working after 10 years!!!

At this occasion. If anybody here in Pattaya has a working S-VHS camera and wants to sell it please let me know. I still have some old S-VHS tapes to capture.

[Thanh-BKK]

Hi.

The battery in my Sony digital camera actually held on quite nicely.... well over five years. It, too, was very expensive and not included with the camera...... and to replace it now is not worthwile because for the price of a new original battery one can buy a better camera these days. They are those "info lithium" batteries that tell you exactly how many minutes/pictures are remaining for the charge, a feature that works reasonably accurate. Fake batteries (i am using one "Oska" now) do not have that feature however the camera works fine (and the battery cost less than a quarter of the original one).

Good thing on my specific camera model (being that old!) is that it can run on two AA standard batteries as well.

Bad thing is - those two AA batteries are finished after exactly 4 (four!!) pictures with flash and display. The batteries get incredible hot in the process. Panasonic Alcaline that is. Those expensive "Oxyride" last longer - 10 pictures with flash and display. Those old cameras are unbelievably power hungry...... still the original Sony "info lithium" battery is good for about 50 pictures and the Oska about the same.

I am now using that camera only if i want to, literally, take a photo of the moon because it has a very good optical zoom. Otherwise i use my phones which have more megapixels and similar picture quality (and even better video quality). Plus the phones do not need to "load up" the flash for a couple of minutes to shoot the next picture.

Best regards.....

Thanh

[Beggar]

They are those "info lithium" batteries that tell you exactly how many minutes/pictures are remaining for the charge, a feature that works reasonably accurate. Fake batteries (i am using one "Oska" now) do not have that feature however the camera works fine (and the battery cost less than a quarter of the original one).

At my photo camera the remaining power display works. At my video camera it shows for instance 160 minutes and the next moment the battery is empty. And all of them are the same and all of them are (hopefullly) original Sony (bought in a Sony shop what might not mean so much). Just expensive scrap without any warranty.

[filingaccount]

I will not respond to the "accusation" that I have a vested interest in battery manufacturing. It is not relevant to the discussion, plus we are already way off topic. If you want to accuse me or call me names or generally need to put forward some "theories" you absolutely want to share, please do so via PM and keep it out of public discussion. Thanks.

Let me instead point you to online sources with links, and I will let everyone make up their own minds...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechargeable_battery

Just select any one of the batteries from the above link and you can read and understand the differences between different battery technologies and perhaps you can put 2 and 2 together and gain some insight to batteries and how they function.

Actually, let me leave a relevant point right below...

A disadvantage of lithium-ion cells lies in their relatively poor cycle life: upon every (re)charge, deposits form inside the electrolyte that inhibit lithium ion transport, resulting in the capacity of the cell to diminish. The increase in internal resistance affects the cell's ability to deliver current, thus the problem is more pronounced in high-current than low-current applications. The increasing capacity hit means that a full charge in an older battery will not last as long as one in a new battery (although the charging time required decreases proportionally, as well).

"...batteries have built-in circuitry which at times acts pretty much like a "life timer" "

It's not often I laugh when reading, but this really cracks me up every time. To use an Internet acronym - ROFL!

[Thanh-BKK]

Hi.

I haven't called you names, please point me to where you saw something like that.

Now as you have given the link AND the explanation regarding Li-Ion batteries, please answer my question - as this is known, why don't they use an older technology (such as Ni-MH) which obviously does NOT have that flaw?

Kind regards......

Thanh

[filingaccount]

First of all, I said "If ... ".

Secondly, how about you click on the link and follow through to the NiMH info found...? That will surely explain it. It's not complicated, but it might take you a few minutes to read it all.

If you are unable to understand what has been written I guess I could digest the information and present you with bite sized pieces of text.

[Thanh-BKK]

Hello.

I asked you that question before receiving your link and i asked it again after reading the information on Ni-MH. Somewhat lower energy density, so what? That's the only downside of Ni-MH against Li-Ion. Hey guess what? I rather have a heavier battery than needing a new one three times as often, and i guess i am not necessary alone with that opinion. I can here again compare with mobile phone batteries where i had Ni-MH and Li-Ion cells for the same phone - same physical size, same voltage, same capacity (mAh) but the Ni-MH was heavier. So what? It lasted three times as long! (as in: life time)

So i'll ask my question again - why don't they make batteries in that older, much more solid, technology anymore? Give us (the buying public) a choice between "heavy but cheap and long-lasting" and "light but expensive and short-lived"..?

But i DO know the answer..... "YOU only get light and short-lived because WE make a lot more money with that".

Best regards.....

Thanh

[filingaccount]

Seriously, please take your conspiracy theories to PM's....

And if you only got 2 flaws out of that I bet you didn't really read it, or you didn't really understand it, or you simply read the first few lines and thought that "this must be all there is"....

I will not respond to your less than informed views about the inner working of different battery technologies from here on out.

If you want to continue to think that "business are out to get me for every penny I have", please do so. Perhaps you could boycott batteries, or boycott businesses, or perhaps start an NGO with the aim of "outing the conspiracy that battery manufacturers are out to get everyone".

Furthermore I was, sadly, wrong in assuming that information presented in a logical and coherent way would actually be received positively, but apparently some people have trouble accepting new information. I have found this to be a curious flaw in human nature that we all should try to work on. Let me be the first to say I have many flaws, and I try to find and improve upon them, although more often than not it takes a serious effort and consequently time.

To miodo2009: I apologize that this thread has been taken over by ongoing "theorizing" by individuals, and further, my tries to inform these individuals with facts.

Anyhow, I will not respond in this thread again. If anyone would like to continue any discussion with me about this particular topic, please contact me via PM. Thanks very much.

[Thanh-BKK]

Hi.

Well it's you who for the third time refuses to answer a simple question which you should be able to answer. is that my fault?

And all that theory behind that "tech speak" simply doesn't match with my practical experience - which is all that matters for me, the user of a device. I don't care what's inside as long as it does it's job.

And if it doesn't do the job i get pissed.

And if someone then comes in and blames failing equipment on my personal lack of knowledge and at the same time cleverly avoids to answer a simple question, well... enough said really.

Regards

Thanh (electrician and motor mechanic by trade, by the way, with a certain knowledge on electricity and batteries)

[nikster]

Seriously, please take your conspiracy theories to PM's....

Don't feed the trolls. There is no counter in batteries, the technology ensures they die all by themselves after a few years. You'll always get some that can go on for 4 or 5 years, but overall don't be surprised the battery is dead after 2. That's analog technology for you.

To the OP, the first post by filingaccount explains it all comprehensively.

If you really want to preserve your Li-ion battery as much as possible, keep your computer plugged in at all time. No need to take the battery out.

New battery technology alleviates the need for this somewhat though. My new unibody MacBook Pro has a battery that's supposed to last 3 years. So far it has 232 charge cycles (that's a lot - 232 complete discharge/charge cycles) and 92% of original capacity. That's a whole lot better than my old MacBook Pro which was on 80% after less than 200 cycles. I imagine that PC laptops will get or already have this newer, better battery tech as well. But if yours is older than a year, it won't have it.