Laptop Usage: Battery Or Mains

[RickSee]

Would appreciate the views of the experts. I have a new laptop and want to preserve the battery (life) as much as possible. This being the case, is it better to continue to run off the mains, or to draw down the battery each time and then recharge? thanks, RS

[welo]

I wonder about this myself, too.

My thinking so far: Battery life-time is related to a maximum number of recharge cycles - meaning after an average of x recharge cycles the battery will die, this should be in the several hundreds. Otherwise battery life time seems to depend on other aspects as well, such as overheating, complete discharge (both bad), etc.

So I've read that the laptop electronics should take care of not overcharging the battery when constantly on AC. I remember reading a view years back that there were actually Laptops that would constantly discharge and recharge the battery while on AC -> bad. Not sure what a correctly working laptop will do nowadays, can it keep the battery charged without adding to the recharge cycles count? It seems yes.

Still, after doing a quick search on the internet it seems that removing the battery when on AC for a longer time period is recommended. Even though you will loose the feature of the battery working as a UPS (if power fails or somebody trips over the power cable )

I've read diverging opinions on the effects of completely draining the battery - some said it is bad, some say you should to do it at least every view weeks and it keeps the battery healthy.

To add to the confusion, you have to distinguish between Nickel-metal Hydride (NiMH) Batteries and Lithium-ion (Li-ion) Batteries. I guess laptops nowadays have Li-ion, but I'm too lazy right now to verify this with Google.

Edited June 11, 2010 by welo

[Pib]

On my two Toshiba home laptops the manuals recommend that the Li-ion battery be completely discharged (i.e., run it down to about 3% power remaining) once a month to extend the live of the battery if primarily running the laptop on line power most of the time. But my experience with these laptops and other laptops is it seems like after approx two years the battery loses most of its capacity (i.e., ability to run the laptop on battery only for much more than 20 minutes) even when discharging the battery approximately once per month.

Now at my last job, most everyone had office IBM or Gateway laptops and the laptops remained turned on most of the time...and the nature of their computer usage was the laptops were plugged in the great, great majority of the time and battery-only usage was mininual...the batteries didn't get run down too often requiring a full recharge. It seems battery replacement was much more frequent in this type of operating environment....it was like the batteries were saying, since you don't exercise me (run me down and then charge me up) I become weak faster. The batteries used were always the manufacturer's batteries which are suppose to be of higher quality/longer lasting than compatible/OEM-equivalent type batteries.

If I had to bet some of my own money on whether it's better to leave the laptop turned on all the time with battery installed, or leave the battery installed all the time with at least monthly discharges, I would go with the latter. Don't really have an opinion/experience with leaving the battery out of the laptop and using line power only.

Edited June 12, 2010 by Pib

[jobsworth]

Ah yes. Batteries and laptops. Always a problem.

Neither last very long.

My present laptop is a Compaq Pressario M2000 from Panthip Plaza.

It is 5 years old and going strong.

The transformer packed up 2 years ago but cost about 1,200 THB to replace.

But the battery has completely packed up

and I have been quoted 3,500 THB for a new one.

I run it without a battery and save the money towards a new laptop - probably an ACER.

My laptop before was a Twinhead in 2000 from Simlim in Singapore - Don't buy there. I was cheated many times.

My Twinhead had a program built into the BIOS which would discharge the battery completely and then recharge it.

This was recommended when new and then from time to time.

Somebody posted an article about how laptop batteries could be rebuilt with new batteries,

which don't cost nearly as much.

IT mall in Chonburi maybe?