Extending the Life of Your Laptop Battery

Posted by on 02/04 at 05:15 PM Permalink

The year 2006 marked a fundamental shift in PC hardware sales as laptop computers (also called “notebooks”) outsold desktop PCs for the very first time. As society becomes more mobile, laptops become ever-more powerful, portable, and affordable, and as wireless networks become ubiquitous, this trend will continue.

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http://www.geeks.com/techtips/2007/techtips-04feb07.htm
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Posted by Ron C. on 02/04 at 10:16 AM

re: Extending Your Laptop Battery Life

I’m not sure where you got your information about the best way to treat modern Notebook batteries, but I would urge you to study this closer, and quickly send out an update.

The following statement concerns me most:
“At least once a month, let the device use up all the battery power.”

My main comment is to do specifically with Li-Ion & Li-Poly batteries, which DO NOT like to be fully discharged… ever. The best way to treat these batteries is to charge them often, and charge them fully! This will give the absolute maximum cycle-life as well as charge life.

I also take issue with your comment “If your device always (or usually) runs on external power, you may be inadvertently decreasing your battery life.”

This is no longer true, again, due to our modern battery charging circuits. Once a Li-Ion battery is fully charged, the charging current is totally removed. At that point the circuit continues to monitor the charge condition of the battery pack, only adding charge when/if needed. The old method of “trickle charging” a NiCd or NiMH battery is NEVER used in Li-Ion or Li-Poly batteries, as this would destroy them in short order.

Your comments are indeed fully valid on all previous battery technologies (NiCd and NiMH), but I see very few notebooks manufactured these days with anything less then Li-Ion or Li-Poly batteries.

To give credibility to my comments, I have worked for over 25 years in Electronics R&D;, and several years directly involved with selection of various battery technologies for use in consumer electronics products at the companies where I was employed.

You may use any/all of my comments, but please do not include my email address or my last name (Ron C. is OK) (there are very few Chinnery’s, it’s easy to look up my email address, and I don’t want people sending me comments or junk mail.

Thanks for your time,
Ron Chinnery

Posted by Harris Graber on 02/04 at 10:37 AM

This was an excellent article on LIon batteries and making the most of the charge within the batter, and extending its life.

While you mension NiCD and NiMH, you say if the tips discussed in the artical apply to those typs of batteries as well. While NiCD has been hardly used in laptops for many, many years, you can still find some laptops that do contain NiMH, and for some reason replacement purches can not be for LIon. While NiMH claim not to take a memory set, they really do. what should be done to extend the NiMH battary life?

Posted by Charles Mc Grath on 02/04 at 04:16 PM

Thanks for an informative article

Posted by kc on 02/04 at 06:24 PM

I wish there was an ‘auto adjust’ for the brightness so it would dim and save the battery when I didn’t need it so bright.

BTW, I think many large companies contributed to the shift. Where I work they issued laptops instead of desktops the last go-round. It might have been to save electricity, but I think it was so they would get more work out of us since most take it home. There was over 1200 laptops issued last year in my building alone.

Posted by Kenny G on 02/06 at 05:32 AM

Great article from geeks… Thanks
The best part is at the bottom “send a FREE card to our troops” this should be at the top of the page.
Thanks

Posted by Jake4130 on 02/07 at 04:01 PM

I cant believe that these kinds of old-wives-tails are still being given out.

When it comes to the so called “memory effect” this is not true and as it turns out, it has never been true. Yep, we have been lied to for years since NiCad batteries came out. It was voodoo trumped up by battery manufacturers to give the customer something to keep an eye on so that if the battery stopped performing, the customer would blame themselves for “not draining the battery before charging.” We all bought into a lie so lets just all stop passing it along as truth. While we are at it, we don’t have to wait a half hour after eating to go swimming.

As for Lithium-ion there are some truths there. As mentioned above it is NOT a good idea to fully drain the battery. Drain it too much and the circuitry that controls the battery can forget it can charge at all. I have actually done this and it really stinks. The claim to charge often no matter how much of a charge the battery currently has is correct. I would imagine that most of us do this with our cell phones. They too have Lithium-ion batteries. I don’t know about everyone else, but I charge my phone as often as possible. I get in the car, I plug it in. I go to bed, I plug it in. The amount of charge it has has no bearing on that and I have yet to have a battery die that wasn’t about due for replacement anyway.

There is one other truth that should be observed. If your going to store a Lithium-ion battery for a long period of time, it is wise to store it at half charge. Not full charge and definitely not almost drained (see above on that one)

Posted by piya on 02/07 at 05:44 PM

another great information for FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Posted by Bev on 09/21 at 05:35 PM

I wanted to know my hard drive crashed awhile back(two years ago, my old computer) this is the first time I’ve had time to sit down and do something about it. I wondered if I could take the old hard drive out of my computer and put it in my new computer with out screwing up my new computer? I was thinking about removing my hard drive from both computers and putting my old hard drive into my new computer,and see if I could juice it up and get it running again? There both Gateways,I’m just scared I will screw up my new Gateway notebook,but doing this.What to do?

Posted by jacky on 01/07 at 06:14 PM

Thank you for this outstanding article.

Posted by battery on 01/07 at 06:58 PM

good,Thanks for an informative article,I have found using higher capacity batteries is a good way to go, that way you dont have to comprimise your laptops performance.

Posted by tom on 01/14 at 07:06 PM

It’s a very useful application!

Posted by Sync Computers on 02/07 at 01:50 PM

Ron Chinnery made some good points, everyone should take note.

Posted by Article Author on 02/17 at 06:26 AM

Don’t u think it’s better not to risk and simply buy a 9 cell battery?

Posted by battery on 02/18 at 05:46 PM

a good read

Posted by toolbattery on 02/19 at 05:35 PM

Its very useful,Thank you.if you want the battery to last longer over a period of time, its always good to make sure you drain it fully and charge it fully as often as you can in order

Posted by notebook lover on 02/20 at 03:41 AM

What I do to lengthen battery life is
1. Make sure you buy notebook which can cut processor speed during idle load
2. Try to install as few as possible applications that run in background. An antivirus software and a messenger are enough for most cases.

Posted by tool batteries on 02/25 at 07:30 PM

perfect,when saving documents, use a USB Pen Drive. This device uses static Flash memory as opposed to a spinning Hard Drive.This is a great way to save battery life!

Posted by Pink Laptops on 03/01 at 08:15 PM

Yea pen drives are great, i use them all the time.

Posted by L1D on 03/07 at 06:31 AM

Good article. I always remove my laptop battery if I’m using it with the power cord.

Posted by battery pack on 03/07 at 05:50 PM

Verizon is about the only place you can get the authentic RIM product and matching door. Most other sites are out of stock and even when they are in stock they have the black battery door which looks like crap. http://www.batteryfast.com.au/toshiba/

Posted by in battery on 03/12 at 05:07 PM

There are several steps you can take to help you get maximum performance from your power tool battery: Prevent Memory Effect - Keep the power tool battery healthy by fully charging and then fully discharging it at least once every two to three weeks. Exceptions to the rule are Li-Ion batteries which do not suffer from the memory effect. http://www.inbattery.com/

Posted by battery on 04/07 at 12:41 AM

Laptop PCs need longer battery life. I used a flash-disk based laptop for much of the ’90s and loved its 10-hour laptop battery life. You just have so much more freedom when you don’t need to worry about keeping a laptop battery charged.
I’ve been very interested in how flash drives could extend notebook battery life. Using a Kill-a-watt power meter I ran some experiments with an Intel Core Duo notebook. Power use is a little more complex than I’d thought. Here’s what I found.

Posted by gateway battery on 05/13 at 01:45 AM

I tested this camera for a client. I didn’t have the light running for more than 15 minutes. The battery lasted approximately 6 hours before recharging. The LCD, however, had a few dead pixels - never saw this before. Tried returning for exchange and had to put up quite a fight. Anyone else seen this? http://www.batterylaptoppower.com

Posted by Laptops on 09/14 at 05:54 PM

Fantastic blog and great tips… bookmarked!

Posted by Martina on 09/16 at 09:32 PM

This laptop battery is very nice .

Posted by Internship on 11/05 at 03:37 AM

Thanks for the post.I think for a battery to last longer & function properly, the most important thing that should be taken care of is that they are not left to charging for a very long time, even after the battery has been charged fully.This does not help in increasing the battery life but shortens its life, instead.

Posted by Appletosh on 01/22 at 12:37 PM

I’m just thinking loud here about pre-amps and all their different sounds and how they contribute to todays recordings and overall production aesthetics. There are actually two types of such devices in general which are coming to my mind. On the one side there are the more unobtrusive ones which are adding almost nothing to the sound but just tighten and focusing the lowend a little bit or enhancing slightly the mid range in a good way. The other ones (mostly tube/valve types) are tending to saturate and distort the incoming signal if driven with higher input gain which may contribute to the desired sound in some cases while in others not. A ‘610′ replica I do have here in my lab for example adds cool harmonics to a bass guitar or a male voice recording but there is too much distortion added to use it on female vocal stackings. Other models are more reserved and gentle in adding such effects but still can be used to excite and color the input signal slightly. Most of this goodness comes from certain side effects of transformer coupled tube stages. The capability of adding overall extra harmonic audio content is just one single side effect and there are different and more complex ones. A transformer for example does have a very complex and non-linear overall behaviour and especially in the very low frequency range.

Posted by Solvency II on 02/04 at 06:52 AM

Thanks for this. I got the link from a comment you left at another site and found it to be a great compilation of the story thus far. Here’s praying for the integrity of the trade

Posted by philip on 08/31 at 11:06 PM

There are a lot of ways to reduce the drain on your laptop battery.

1.You should toggle your power options.
2. Turn down brightness
3. Reduce the background programs with msconfig
4. Take out all unnecessary USB devices
5. Remove DVD/CD from drives.
6. Turn off your hard drive when not in use.