Software to disable charging?

On the XPS I had, briefly, I saw a piece of Dell software that "disabled" charging...Presumably so you could ALWAYS leave your laptop plugged in but it actually let the battery cycle as to not let it die...Is this possible on our AW's?

 

If you use FunctionKey & F2 (see the little battery icon on F2?) - that will allow you to cycle between the various battery charging states.

 

On the R3 it doesn't it's another of those awesome worthless keys on the R3.

 

If you are always plugged in to the wall always take the battery out as they only have a certain amount of cycles

 

mmm so if you are doing something other than stay on desktop and you loose power for some reason the laptop will just shut down on you... mmm i'm not that sure it is a wise advice

 

I think of my battery as a cheap UPS.

 

I second this

 

IIRC, isnt the R3 the one that never fully charges (maxes to 99%) to avoid killing the battery's longterm longevity? Or am I thinking of the ENVY 14?

 

It certainly isn't the R3.

 

Would you really want to disable charging? If you did, then the battery would go dead, which is okay, but then any little interruption in power or brief unplugging kills everything. I'm not sure that's what you want. Having a charged battery idling in your laptop at most times is a very good thing for its backup value. Once I was at work, and the whole building lost power due to a transformer failure. It was early evening and a big presentation was scheduled for the next morning with scientists who were coming from out-of-town to see us. I was able to continue working uninterrupted and finish gracefully because I work on a laptop, while others were hosed (and were not quite ready the next day) because they have desktops without backup power systems.

The lithium-ion batteries in laptops are only good for a certain number of discharge cycles, that is true. I can see the concern: you are worried about slowly wearing them out with less-than-full discharges repeated over and over. However, you'd be wearing them out anyway with normal use. Do you ever run a computer until its battery dies outright? I sure don't. So we all partially discharge and recharge our batteries. That's the life of a computer battery.

I also would prefer not to have to unwind the potential mess if my machine fell into an unstable state due to power being lost with only a discharged battery present (or none at all.) I'm all for graceful shutdowns whenever possible.

 

This is a very motivating post. Deserves +1 rep I remember when I used to get 2.5hours from my hp's battery. Now it gets around 1hour lolz. Does sticking it in the freezer do anything?

 

Thanks, dookie! Nice handle, by the way!

As far as the ole' refrigerator trick with your batteries, while it definitely will make them nice and chilled, it's bunk on the conditioning part. I think the myth began due to the fact that many types of batteries don't take heat well. For instance, lead-acid "car" batteries generally have shorter lifetimes in hot climates.

You know, batteries are the hardest thing in technology to "do right." They are always the big limitation in reliability and longevity with any sophisticated electronic device. There is a small team at Caltech right now (or at least there was very recently) that is researching how to do batteries, like, way better than they are currently. I think they were more concerned with hybrid car battery packs than with laptops, but it is very technical stuff and all of the cost-effective breakthroughs seem to be centered around setting up networks of cells with sophisticated microprocessors to constantly monitor and adjust the package against individual cells going bad and ruining the pack.

I guess I'm off topic, and I don't "look as cool" as you do, so I'll stop now (and go to bed.)

 

My handle: Dookie? It's not that cool. It was just the first thing I could think of. "Dookie" was what my college roommates and I were going to name our dog. We never got that dog though lolz.

 

Not true, when the battery stays charged all the time it dies out quickly, and by quickly I mean <6 months.

It needs to be cycled at least once every 2 weeks to a month. Not a hassle to unplug of course, I just know my XPS did it.

 

On my previous lappy (Sony AW180Y/Q) there was a utility that allowed you to charge the battery to either 50% or 80% automatically to extend battery life. Articles I have read on the net seem to support the idea that batts left fully charged and in a warm to hot place (like the battery bay of a laptop in use) have a shorter life. I use the Fn+F2 hotkeys to keep my battery charge about 50% when it's on my desktop. I only charge it fully when I'm going on the road with it.

 

Is the Fn+F2 on the sony or the AW?

 

I think alienware. Ive never used it but the is a battery symbol on my f2 button on my r2.

 

Fn+F2 is on the M17x...press it and it cycles the battery charger on and off allowing you to control the charge state of your batt. After you have turned off the charger....and you want to enable it again you MAY have to remove and reconnect the battery to get it to charge. This can be done without shutting down the lappy while on AC power.

 

I dunno about <6 months... I've got a Dell Inspiron 9300 that I bought in 2005(maybe 2006) that as a DTR, has always been plugged in. Think back then, unplugged, the battery would last about 2 hours. Even now, after all that time with a fully charged battery(no cycling that I know of as I rarely unplugged the beast), if I unplug the laptop now and use only battery, I've had it go for at least an hour if not more, so the battery definitely isn't dead by any means. Not perfectly healthy, but not dead.

 

Doesn't work, the FN+F2 combo is another useless button on this rig. All it does is show the enable button. I'm not sure if the Bios has a disable charge option but that would be a pain to have to reboot to enable/disable charging.

 

It's on the g73's, When you plugin the AC adapter at atleast 97%- and above, It won't charge anymore, It stately say that It's Not Charging.

 

This is kinda neat. Is there a way to set it so that it stop charging automatically when it hits 50% or something?

Bummer. More filler buttons and stuff. Typical American company

Yah, that's a good feature. Do you know if that's just the way the battery or charge is? Or is it the BIOS/computer software that regulates that?

 

I think its more like a bios feature.

 

Not sure exactly what point DaneGRClose is making here....but I can attest that you CAN turn off charging and (most of the time) turn it on again in real time without shutting down or rebooting. There are those occasions when charging does not resume simply from the Fn+F2 sequence....charging status can be monitored from Windows mobility center (Fn+F10) or mousing over power icon in task tray...if this happens just lift lappy slightly release the battery latch to disconnect it temporarily and immediately latch it back in...charging resumes!

 

Pretty sure he is referencing the FN+F2 button on the R3 which appears to do nothing. It may work on the R1 and R2 but not the R3 to the best of what those of us with them have seen.

 

It works on the R1/R2 orionz, it doesn't work on the R3 though. It just shows the same "Battery Enabled" box no matter how many times you push it. I really don't understand why Dell/AW didn't implement something to disable charging outside of the BIOS, even my XPS has a simple program to disable charging

 

Check...gotcha...forgot you had the R3!