Remove Your Laptop Battery To Make It Last Longer
May 26th, 2008 • Filed Under
One of my colleagues gave me a great tip last week for extending the life of a laptop battery – don’t use it! No seriously, what he meant was if your laptop is connected to the mains, then you should remove the battery to extend its life.
Why? Well when you battery is inserted in your laptop it is constantly charging. Batteries are only capable of a finite number of charges, so reducing the number of charges will extend its life. Also, by removing it from the mains it will allow the laptop battery to discharge properly when you actually use it, which will allow it work nearer its capacity.
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- Filed Under: For Your PC
- Tags: Tags: battery, laptop
at last i'll be able to watch footie for free so i can get rid of sky sports cheers man ...
Hmmm nice, but i am using net with 64kbps. Will this work for me....
So what we’re waiting for is for Microsoft (or some other company) to take the first step into creating laptop/battery-friendly OS’es.
No this is simply not true. Laptops, Cell Phones and many other portable devices DO stop charging the battery once they are full. If they did not they would overcharge and probably explode. Ever noticed your battery getting warm when you are charging it? Then once it stops charging…hence the light goes off…meaning it stops charging…the battery cools down. If a battery were continually charged it will continue to stay warm. What IS true about removing your battery from your computer is that keeping it cool does help lengthen its life. If you happen to leave your laptop on 24/7 on your desk…then the heat of the computer constantly keeps the battery warm and accelerates the aging of the battery. If you do plan on removing your battery then remove it when it is about 50% charged….storing a full battery isn’t good for the life of it…and storing the battery in a dead state isnt good either. Hence why when we get a new toy…out of the box it has some battery power but the manufacturer recommends we charge it.
In fact, I just found this from the About Website:
“First it’s important to understand what overcharging is:
Over-charging occurs when the charger keeps the battery at a temperature that is warm to touch (body temperature) while in ready condition.
Li-Ion laptop batteries have built-in controller chips which prevent it from overcharging, as they can explode if overcharged. Overcharging does not affect the life span other than potentially destroying the battery.”
Additionally,
All laptops manufactured with Windows (Since Windows XP)…have advanced write caching enabled on the hard drive. Microsoft has done this to improve disk performance but with the understanding that if the AC fails the battery will provide power. The advanced write caching allows the computer to be faster by leaving more information in the hard drive cache. So what this means is on a laptop if your power goes out…and you dont have your battery in…you are many times more likely to lose the information you are working on or even corrupt your hard drive. If you choose to believe in this Myth…then you should turn off advanced write caching…as this is a feature only available to computers with an uninterruptable power supply (battery in this case).
Wow. Now then I know what commentluv does. lol. I’ve been hearing about it but do not fully understand what is so good about it.