Battery care advice?

Laptops are a bit of a mystery to me. In my 15+ years experience with PC's it's been exclusively desktops. However, one thing I have gained knowledge of laptops in, over those years is two things:

1. Batteries die.
2. Batteries are expensive.

I've been told in the past that people often remove their battery whilst the laptop is plugged in to the mains, only installing the battery to charge it, or to run off battery solely.

In a rather lazy attempt at a question, as I guess I could just try this, but it does involve lifting and it's still rather early on a Sunday - will the M17X run off AC without the battery installed? And if it does, is there really any beneficial gains to taking the battery out, instead of just leaving it in?

Granted second part of that question is void if the first part is a simple no answer!

Thanks!

 

See this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ing-alienware-laptop-battery.html#post8682732

 

You can remove the battery and run off the AC, but the only problem with that is if you accidentally unplug the outlet or if there is a power surge or something and you lose power to your laptop. You'll lose any unsaved data.

As far as taking out the battery or leaving it in, I was searching for the same answer as you. Pretty much it comes down to 2 theories of thought. Theory one is to keep the battery in at all times. I have read that there is a sensor (or something) in the battery that once it reaches 100%, it stops charging and keeps the life of your battery stable. The other theory is that by keeping the battery in after 100% charge will wear the life of your battery and after a year or so, you'll need to replace it.

So far I have kept my battery in at all times and haven't seen any loss of life in battery. Actually, when I first got my laptop back in March, I downloaded CPUID HWMonitor and it showed the wear level of my battery at 8%. I just now checked it, and it is at 7%. So I somehow gained a 1% reduction in wear level. Since I barely ever run off of battery power alone, it doesn't matter too much if my battery wears quicker or not. Of course I would like to keep it as fresh as possible, but without finding solid proof on how to keep it's life, I'll just keep it plugged in and monitor it every so often.

 

Thanks for those replies. Much appreciated.