Laptop, plug in or not?

[zlodnick]

I did a google search and got conflicting advice.

I never use the laptop unpluged. When I want to use it, I plug it in and when Im finished, I unplug it.

Is this ok or not?

[CharlieH]

Nothing wrong in doing that, although for the sake of the battery, you might want to run it down fully and recharge it occasionally to prelong the battery life. Permanently on mains power will effect battery life. If you never use the laptop without mains power, take the battery out of it.

[thedemon]

All notebooks nowadays have Lithium Ion batteries and my understanding is that most battery wear occurs at under 20% and over 80% charge. So leaving it on charge all the time isn't good for the battery. Some notebooks come with a battery saver function in the BIOS/UEFI which stops the battery charging at 80% of full charge to address this problem.

Having said that, I frequently do the same because it's too much hassle having to think ahead whether I'm going to need a full battery or not. Replacement aftermarket batteries are fairly cheap too, as long as the battery is accessible.

[zlodnick]

Thank you very much.

[hkt83100]

Normally I use my Laptop (actually a netbook) running off the mains. I take the battery out, and run it from my UPS via the normal charger. The battery is now about 5 years old and gives me still about 4 hours working time. About once a month I run the battery down and recharge it.

[siamike]

There's nothing wrong with running your laptop always plugged in.

But if you want to prolong the battery for as long as possible, run it down to a 50% charge, remove it from the laptop and store in your refrigerator, preferably after sealing it in something like a Zip-lock plastic bag. Just like medicine, LiIon batteries have a shelf life whether you use them or not; placing them in the frig slows the process of self degradation. Dont put your battery in the freezer section, as getting them too cold will kill them rather quickly.

[Straight8]

I seem to recall an article by 'how-to-geek' that you should deplete the battery to about 40 - 50% once a week to get the most mileage out of it, but yeah as others have said, nothing wrong with having it plugged into the ac adapter all the time.

[IMHO]

If you don't run your laptop on battery, I can pretty much guarantee you that within 18 months you'll have a battery life in the minutes range instead of hours.

Conversely, if you were to deplete and recharge your battery daily, even after 18 months you'll still get within 90% of the original runtime.

[stuck]

The prevailing wisdom is this:

If you are going to leave your laptop plugged in for long periods of time, it is wise to run the battery to 50 percent and remove it. While you won't have any backup during a power outage, you will salvage the battery life when you do need a battery. You can always buy an inexpensive UPS big enough to power your essential electronics including your laptop.

[attrayant]

There is no 'one-size-fits-all' answer. You should follow the manufacturer's guidelines and take advantage of the battery management software it came with, if any.

If you never use the laptop without mains power, take the battery out of it.

If you live in the same country I do, it's impossible to run on mains all the time because of the occasional power failures. I leave the battery in so it acts as a UPS for the laptop on mains power.

Even back in the states I almost always used my laptops as desktops and rarely unplugged them unless I needed to take it with me to a meeting. My laptop batteries have always lasted for as long as I've owned the laptops (5-6 years on average before I upgrade) without any degradation in storage capacity.

Edited January 29, 2015 by attrayant

[Pinot]

I have two laptops from different manufacturers that both come with a program for running the laptop at 50% power. There are some programs that you can download that do the same thing.

[KhnomKhnom]

Most all newer devices like that use some version of a lithium-ion polymer battery. Read Wikipedia for full definitions, etc.

This type battery was developed to reduce or eliminate the "memory" function of earlier rechargeable battery types. People still have a memory of these memory batteries and falsely apply that to the new style which asserts NO memory.

That indicates that there is little to no reason to run the battery down before recharging it. However, these batteries need to have circuits in their chargers to limit automatically over charge, and in the user end, the computer, a circuit to limit total discharge. I can not find out why.

Definitive info on these batteries is just not there, except every source does claim the exploding/inflamed quality of these items. One of their failure modes is explosion or spontaneous burning. Age seems to cause this, but I see no info about WHAT age becomes a danger.

My advice is to just leave the computer on the charger all the time and deal with whatever battery failure comes along... the cost is low and just replacing every now and then should be thought of as part of the cost of operating the computer.

[CajunCruiser]

I inherited my company laptop from my former boss who kept it plugged in all the time in the docking station. When I got it, the battery would charge only up to 62%. Within a couple of months the battery was down to 42%, would not charge further, and the laptop would not run unless plugged in.

Now I have a new battery that I use when I leave the office, running it unplugged until it gets down to warning level, at which time I plug it in until 100% charged (or overnight). The old battery is the one I use at work when the laptop is in the docking station.

[asdecas]

There's nothing wrong with running your laptop always plugged in.

But if you want to prolong the battery for as long as possible, run it down to a 50% charge, remove it from the laptop and store in your refrigerator, preferably after sealing it in something like a Zip-lock plastic bag. Just like medicine, LiIon batteries have a shelf life whether you use them or not; placing them in the frig slows the process of self degradation. Dont put your battery in the freezer section, as getting them too cold will kill them rather quickly.

If I spend some quality time in my fridge, will I also avoid degradation? Or must I give up Patpong entirely?

[Pib]

A couple of ways to shorten the lifescan of a lithiun-ion battery is: (1) always having it 100% charged like running the laptop on line power all the time, and (2) frequent charge cycles with deep cycles (say down to 10% charge) being more destructive than lite charge cycles (say down to around 50% only). And letting your lithion-ion battery discharge to almost empty and then recharging to 100% is for "recalibration" of the charge metering circuit; it does not impact the battery per say other than using up one more cycle...and a battery can only be charged so many times (cycles) before it fails/has less and less runtime between charges. While many laptop manuals recommend a deep discharge every few months that for metering recalibration and not for benefit of the battery.

Take a look at this short layman's article on charging a lithium-ion battery in a tablet (same applies for any device using a lithium-ion battery like a laptop): Link.

And here's another good article on lithium-ion battery charging. Link.

Also, don't store a lithium-ion battery fully charged as a 100% charge stresses the battery...best to charge it to around 40 to 60%. In fact, new lithium-ion batteries come from the factory only charged to around 40% since they don't know when the battery will actually be sold and having it charged to 100% waiting for someone to buy it is detrimental to the battery.

In closing, my Lenovo laptop includes a battery conservation utility/driver that monitors battery charge and when it been charged to 100% for more than a few days it pops up a notice recommending I turn-on battery conservation mode which allows the battery to discharge to 60% and then maintains the charge at 60%. My Lenovo manual also recommends a deep discharge and charge to 100% every few months to reset/maintain the battery charge "metering circuit accuracy." Now I run my laptop on line voltage all day but try to remember to turn on the battery conservation utility each day when turning on the laptop to keep the battery charged at 60% vs stressing it at 100%. But when I do need 100% charge like using the laptop without being plugged into the wall I turn off conservation mode and it charges to 100%. Below is what that Lenovo battery conservation utility says regarding battery maintenance/always maintaining a 100% charge (i.e., like running off wall power all the time) which is not a good thing for battery lifespan.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Pib

[sean in udon]

If you want to get real geeky, have a read of http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_store_batteries

Worked in a computer shop for a few years and regularly had customers come to us with dead batteries in laptops that were less than 2 years old and almost always plugged in. Almost always had to answer 'But I never used the battery, so why does it not work?'

The 40%/50% charge level seems to be the best option for storage if you are happy to remove the battery and run on mains only. Downside is, any blips or power cuts (TiT) and your machine will instantly shut down. Hence the recommendations of a UPS.

My preferred option is to fully charge the battery, then use battery only until Windows warns me there's only 10% left. Then fully charge again. I do this at least once a week.

I'm not sure storing the battery in a fridge is a good idea. Unless you have it sealed in a bag that's guaranteed moisture proof, I would be concerned. But then, I've never tried it, so only conjecture and the fridge will be a cooler option than room temperature in Thailand.

[BudRight]

If you keep the computer in one place all the time, best to be using a desktop.

[thefactoryoutlet]

It's even useless to think about it.

Batteries are just crap because manufacturers do not find any interest in making better products and using future technology.

Your battery will die anyway, so no need to care at all.

[thefactoryoutlet]

If you keep the computer in one place all the time, best to be using a desktop.

Will never use desktop and even think ridiculous that they still exist.

At least the laptop battery is useful as a UPS in case of electricity problem.

[rakman]

The Li-ion used on hybrid cars don't charge more than 80% nor discharge less than 20%. If you run down your Tesla battery to zero, it will brick the car and a new battery will need to be installed, outside of warranty.

[Xircal]

I use my laptop like the OP does. It's always plugged into the mains and I unplug before going to bed. Machine is an Acer Aspire 772G with Windows 8.1

I've never had a problem with it and the machine is 14 months old now.

[thedemon]

For anyone with a windows notebook that is interested in knowing the condition of their battery, both current and historical, you can get detailed information by doing the following;

Open a command prompt (normal not administrative) and type: powercfg /batteryreport

That will create an html file called battery-report.html located in C:\Users\Yourusername\

Locate the file and double click to open the report.

Most of the historical information is generated and stored by windows itself, but not all. The cycle count and current wear level comes from the smart batteries firmware. So even reinstalling windows or changing the hard drive will not reset that information.

[WhizBang]

That's how I use my laptop too. Plus the battery acts as a UPS in the event of a power outage.

[Pib]

@thedemon,

Thanks for that battery report info. My battery report primarily reports "weekly" snapshots/usage info (i.e., usage time, charge level, etc) and battery serial number, computer it's in, operating system, etc. Basically providing a snapshot summary of basic charge info once every week. I was interested if it would show "cycle count"...while it had a data field for cycle count it was blank. The report doesn't show anything in layman's terms regarding the health of a battery like saying "Good, OK, etc., like a person usually sees in S.M.A.R.T. type data.

However, but, I did see one weekly snapshot of data in the report where it shows Battery Design Capacity and Full Charge Capacity which I find very informative. It reported under the "Battery Capacity History" area ad shows how the Full Charge Capacity and Battery Design Capacity have changed over the last year.

To me it's basically saying my computer which is around 13 months old initially had a Full Charge Capacity of 48,880mWh and Battery Design Capacity of 48,240mMw the week of 17-24 Feb 14, but for a very recent week of 12-19 Jan 15 about a year later it had a Full Charge Capacity of 44,287mWH and Battery Design Capacity of 45,820mWh. To me, that is telling me my battery over the approx last year of aging has possibly lost about 8% of its charge capacity.

However, but, I noticed for the weeks of 21-28 Apr 14 and 28 Apr-5May 14 the Full Charge Capacity and Battery Design Capacity readings made two drops but they been steady since. Now was that drop due to something chemically happening to the battery over that two week peroid...or maybe a Windows or a laptop specific driver update...or maybe that's when I did a battery meter recalibration because I remember doing it twice about 6 months ago within a few weeks period. I had to guess that change was caused by the battery meter recalibration. I'll do another battery meter recalibration soon and see if those readings change after the recalibration.

I expect the report didn't go back the whole time I've had the laptop (since Dec 13) because I reinstalled the operating system in Feb 14 where the battery report data starts which apparently created a new data starting point.

Edited January 30, 2015 by Pib

[IMHO]

Most all newer devices like that use some version of a lithium-ion polymer battery. Read Wikipedia for full definitions, etc.

This type battery was developed to reduce or eliminate the "memory" function of earlier rechargeable battery types. People still have a memory of these memory batteries and falsely apply that to the new style which asserts NO memory.

Most still use packs made up out of 18650 Li-ion cells, not Li-Po's.

[louse1953]

If you keep the computer in one place all the time, best to be using a desktop.

Why?

[Pib]

Most all newer devices like that use some version of a lithium-ion polymer battery. Read Wikipedia for full definitions, etc.

This type battery was developed to reduce or eliminate the "memory" function of earlier rechargeable battery types. People still have a memory of these memory batteries and falsely apply that to the new style which asserts NO memory.

Most still use packs made up out of 18650 Li-ion cells, not Li-Po's.

Big 10-4 on that....I have broke apart a half dozen or so laptop batteries and what you have inside is x-amount of 18650 batteries with the battery protection circuit board.

[thedemon]

@thedemon,

Thanks for that battery report info. My battery report primarily reports "weekly" snapshots/usage info (i.e., usage time, charge level, etc) and battery serial number, computer it's in, operating system, etc. Basically providing a snapshot summary of basic charge info once every week. I was interested if it would show "cycle count"...while it had a data field for cycle count it was blank. The report doesn't show anything in layman's terms regarding the health of a battery like saying "Good, OK, etc., like a person usually sees in S.M.A.R.T. type data.

However, but, I did see one weekly snapshot of data in the report where it shows Battery Design Capacity and Full Charge Capacity which I find very informative. It reported under the "Battery Capacity History" area ad shows how the Full Charge Capacity and Battery Design Capacity have changed over the last year.

To me it's basically saying my computer which is around 13 months old initially had a Full Charge Capacity of 48,880mWh and Battery Design Capacity of 48,240mMw the week of 17-24 Feb 14, but for a very recent week of 12-19 Jan 15 about a year later it had a Full Charge Capacity of 44,287mWH and Battery Design Capacity of 45,820mWh. To me, that is telling me my battery over the approx last year of aging has possibly lost about 8% of its charge capacity.

However, but, I noticed for the weeks of 21-28 Apr 14 and 28 Apr-5May 14 the Full Charge Capacity and Battery Design Capacity readings made two drops but they been steady since. Now was that drop due to something chemically happening to the battery over that two week peroid...or maybe a Windows or a laptop specific driver update...or maybe that's when I did a battery meter recalibration because I remember doing it twice about 6 months ago within a few weeks period. I had to guess that change was caused by the battery meter recalibration. I'll do another battery meter recalibration soon and see if those readings change after the recalibration.

I expect the report didn't go back the whole time I've had the laptop (since Dec 13) because I reinstalled the operating system in Feb 14 where the battery report data starts which apparently created a new data starting point.

That's interesting. I haven't used the battery report utility much in the past but I've never seen a report that didn't contain the cycle count. Also it surprises me that the Design Capacity number has changed over time. I thought that should remain constant so I wonder whether your battery doesn't have firmware that supplies that information leaving Windows to calculate it by historical numbers.

Here are a few screenshots of battery reports done on 4 different machines.

This is a Samsung Ultrabook that has just had the battery replaced. Notice the Full Charge Capacity is slightly higher than the Design Capacity which seems normal for a new battery.

This is the same battery 2 weeks later now with 18 cycles. The Full Charge Capacity has actually increased!

This is a brand new Surface Pro 3 so shows no cycles because it hasn't reached 1 cycle yet. Full Charge Capacity also slightly higher than Design.

A 1-2 yr old Surface Pro 1 with only 36 cycles but showing 8-9% wear. This unit spent much of it's life in a docking station hence the low cycle number.

Another Surface Pro 1, same age but with 112 cycles. Wasn't used in a docking station and shows less wear than the previous unit.

The first SP1 which was docked and therefore on charge suffered more battery wear than an identical unit which wasn't docked. I had a similar but worse experience with the OEM battery previously in the Samsung which was used mainly on AC. The battery wear was almost 30% in a year.

I have read that Microsoft put high quality batteries in the Surface Pro's because they're almost impossible to change. In reality a SP will be thrown away once the battery dies. That is what got me interested in this subject in the first place because I plan to buy several of them for my staff. For a regular notebook it's not so important because replacement batteries are quite cheap. I noticed that many posters suggest removing the battery when on charge. That may be a good idea but for many devices nowadays that isn't practical or sometimes even possible.

[Pib]

Nope, I don't get a Cycle Count on my report...I have a Lenovo Z510 IdeaPad running Win 8.1. See below image. Notice is just has a "dash" in the cycle count data field.

If a laptop battery is easily replaced and assuming it's not unusually high priced, personally I wouldn't worry about it staying 100% charged all the time. Plus the battery on a laptop acts like a UPS when the power goes out.

Now on my Z510 the battery is "not" easily replaced as it requires partial dis-assembly of the laptop....around 20 screws must be removed on the bottom and under the keyboard, the keyboard must be removed, and the the entire bottom case must be taken off and it's somewhat of a pain to get the case off with all the plastic snaps even with all the screws removed. I've done this 2 times already in adding RAM and a SSD at separate times. More and more laptops seem to be moving towards not having the battery easily and externally replaced--turning into like changing the battery on a tablet which I expect the great majority of folks would not attempt on their own and instead take it to a shop. When a person needs to take the laptop to a shop for battery replacement and maybe not have it for a couple of days and don't feel comfortable with their hard drive data possibly being accessed while in the shop, I can understand why they may want to get as much time out of their battery as possible by treating it well.

My treating the battery well involves using the battery conservation utility (i.e., little software module) that comes with my Lenovo to keep it charged at 60% while plugged in and conservation mode turned on. I turn off the conservation mode setting when I do want a 100% charge like going mobile/not using line power. See below snapshot of the battery conservation utility screen showing the charge level....I'm plugged into the wall outlet right now but the utility keeps the charge at 60%.

[wgdanson]

I use my laptop like the OP does. It's always plugged into the mains and I unplug before going to bed. Machine is an Acer Aspire 772G with Windows 8.1

I've never had a problem with it and the machine is 14 months old now.

I would certainly hope you haven't had a problem in only 14 months. Post again when no problem for 4 or 5 years please.