Latitude E6510 Owner's Lounge

Dell has a document titled: "E-Family Re-Image How-To Guide - A02 v2 11.pdf" that goes into detail about the purpose of each driver and the required installation order.

It can be downloaded from the E6510 Drivers and Downloads page, System Utilities category.

Direct Link:
Drivers and Downloads

 

Is keeping the laptop plugged in likely to wear down the life of the battery? I only ask because I had it plugged in pretty much all weekend and it seemed to discharge unusually fast today.

6cell dropped 30% over the course of an hour & 15 min, on powersaver, just using Word 2007.

I have the 520 i5 & nvidia graphics by the way if that's any help.


I guess I'll also ask another question - I mostly do word processing, web browsing, and use of itunes on the machine, but I do occasionally get the inkling to play a game for an hour or two. The machine is well up to the requirements, I guess I'm just afraid of the heat significantly wearing down the components - is this a valid concern? I wouldn't be putting Crysis up on high, but something like Empire Total War on low. Use is typically on a plastic or wooden desk.

Thanks.

 

I don't know the battery technology specifics at hand, but it has been said that deep discharges are better on battery lifetime vs. shallow discharges and recharges. Probably still applies although may not be worth pursuing too religiously, given any hassles with doing so.

However, once plugged in, the battery recharges just once while you are running on line power. So, staying plugged in is not a problem.

There are some settings in the BIOS for when to allow the battery to charge... perhaps these can be used in conjunction with user behavior to achieve deep discharges before recharging.

As for heat, just use your machine and make sure not to block its ventilation.

GK

 

Wikipedia:

That is not normal. You should contact Dell about that. It could be that you have a faulty battery.

It is a valid concern, but based on my observation on my Latitude E6400 (so it could be different), the laptop does a great job at keeping the heat away from the battery. It's not perfect (it's never is), but it's very good.

A lithium-ion battery should last you a year to a year and half before the provides hours are insignificant to you (battery will still work). Also, the battery degradation is not continuous, some times it will drop fast and then slow down, and then accelerate again, and then slows down (and so on and so fort). Towards it end, it slows down a lot.
For example, my 9-cell battery provided me with almost 9 hours of battery life. Today, almost 2 years (in December), I have 2 hours and 30min max.
(both times were using the same environment settings: System idle, screen brightness to minimum, Dell extended battery turned ON (so everything is turned off), Aero ON but transparency disabled, Wireless ON (was using Vista 64-bit (Win7 was not out), and now Windows 7 64-bit).

I have to change my battery now, 2 hours and half is nice for many, but for me I need at least 5 hours.

Here is some tricks to slow down aging of the battery that I discovered with my laptop:
- Disable recharge when you still have a juice. For instance, if your battery is at 100%, and it's down at 90-80%, why recharge it? You can plug-it in, and hit Fn+F2 to disable recharge (an icon on the system tray will inform you of the case). Recharging the battery creates heat which accelerate the aging process.

- As mentioned, avoid heat. Don't leave the laptop in a warm place. While the laptop does a good job of keep the heat it produces itself from the battery, heat still accumulates between your laptop and your wood desk (that is why your table is warm). If you plan to play a game for a long period of time in a warm place, it might be best to pull out the battery out of your system. Or go to a cooler place. Sliding a pen under the laptop will help air flow too (a cheap solution that works).

- Not using the battery, APPARENTLY accelerate the aging process compared to when you use it. Apparently it has to do with the oxidation process that occurs inside the battery.

Yes all this sucks very much, but up to date this is the best solution that we have. There is a new Lithium mixture that claims (it very new, so consider it untested, but it out on the market), that it able to keep a much much much much larger capacity over a span of 3 years. Dell has that option for the new Latitude E series (9-cell), but I don't know how much it cost to get it separately. The downside is that it has a bit less WHr for the same size as 9-cell from the current mixture. This new battery features a 3 year warranty from Dell. Another laptop manufacture that uses this new battery technology is ASUS with select B series laptop (B for Business).

As the battery is the same for the E6400, E6410, E6500, E6510, I hesitate between:
- 90Whr 9-cell - new to the E6x10 series.
- 85Whr 9-cell - a bit cheaper solution.
- Or, 81Whr 9-cell 3 year battery - much more expensive.

As I know no one here or in real life interested in trying the new battery, mostly because of it's higher price tag and lowest WHr available in the 9-cell battery, I don't know how it performs.

 

The only way to be sure of what is happening is to look at the numbers. I use the battery info page of RMClock because it shows both the battery charge status and the charge / discharge rate. If running at light load at low to medium brightness then about 12W to 15W would be a reasonable power consumption.

If the computer gets hot then the fan should step up a gear. Unless the cooling system gets impeded or clogged then it should handle the heat. In fact, the extra airflow caused by a fast-running fan is better at cooling the rest of the chassis.

The Nickel based batteries need deep discharges to avoid loss of capacity. My experience is that Lithium based batteries benefit from an occasional (once per 3 to 6 months) full discharge so that the battery electronics can recalibrate the capacity. However, Dell provides no utility for this.

I haven't studied the E6410's behaviour but I noticed that on the E6400 that, if it was left plugged in, then the battery would gradually drop to ? 94% ? before it started to recharge.

I would note that the new 90Whr battery actually has a capacity higher than the headline number. Mine (made by Samsung) has a design capacity of 93.24Whr and a current capacity of 91.6WHr. In contract, the previous 85WHr battery had a designed capacity of 84.9WHr. so it appears that Dell is providing a buffer against new batteries rarely achieving their design capacity.

I would be reluctant to pay a big premium for the 3-year battery given the price of original Dell batteries on ebay.

John

 

Wow, thanks. Ok, I'm pretty techno-illiterate, so correct me if my cliffs from your post are wrong:

A. Despite GK's response above, leaving the thing constantly charging is going to degrade it about 20% annually.

B. I need to contact Dell. (My campus has an IT center that's authorized to perform Dell warranty repairs - go to them?)

C. Stick a book under the laptop to prop it up during heavy use (games) to create better ventilation.

D. Heavier use (again, games) shouldn't wear down the battery too much - does this apply to the processor and GPU as well?

Thanks!

 

Oh something I forgot (well we forgot) to mention.
- By default (well on my E6400), the battery charge method is set to Express Charge, in the BIOS.
- Fast charging batteries is not good.
- Be sure to change that option to Normal charge rate. Yes it will take more time to recharge the battery, but you slowdown the aging process.

Also, Dell Battery FAQ: http://www.euro.dell.com/content/to...mea/en/batteries_faq?c=uk&l=en&cs=ukdhs1#faq6

 

Interesting. Perhaps an aberation of the monitor? I may never know since I don't actually use 'my' E6400 nor E6410... they're off at colleges. Hence, some of my help here is a bit muddy.

GK

 

But what does 'constantly charging' mean? Constantly connected to the charger? Or actually recharging? And how hard could it be for Dell to design the system to remain constantly connected to the charger and not suffer reduced battery lifetime for it?

Me thinks the primary concern is frequently recharging shallow discharges. Hence the manual controls (BIOS and FN key) for moderating this by not recharging until the battery is more deeply discharged. And don't always plug it in everytime you get near an outlet.

GK

 

That is correct (well I don't know about the 20%, I never measured), But like I said, if you use your battery, it should not be a problem, as the battery doesn't stay charge at 100% all the time.

Contact Dell directly first, and don't mention about your campus IT center. Why? Because if you go see the campus IT, they will never say "Yes" in charging something if they are not 1000% sure that they won't get a "No" form Dell. If they say yes, and Dell says no, they need to pay the battery to you. So they will be very hard and find millions of excuse to no cover you, including "it's normal battery behavior".
Call Dell, be patient, and very nice with them, and they will be nice with you.

Anything to lift the laptop at an angle a bit. A pen or pencil usually do the trick.. a book might be inconvenient. In my opinion, I think it's fine if you play a game for 20-30min, but if you plan to play for an hour, then put a pen.

I am not following you? Are you asking if the CPU and GPU degrade over time?