FN+F2 Dsable Battery Charging WORKS

For those who don't know, you CAN disable battery charging on m11x with FN+F2.

Just download the dell battery meter. Here is a screenshot. Pressing fn+f2 brings up that box.

The only downside is, every time you restart, you must press fn+f2 and check the box each time.Also, unchecking the box resumes charging. No need to restart !!!

EDIT: FOUND THE FILE. Its called btmeter.exe I've attached it.

Reason for using it: Prolong battery life by keeping it at a 40% - 50% charge state. This GREATLY reduces battery wear.

 

Nice will search for baterry monitor thanks!

 

Im curious - why would you want to disable battery charging?

 

if you are planning to have the laptop plugged in for an extended period it helps the longevity of the battery if it is in the 40%~50% range.

 

^Ah, makes sense. Derrrrr on my part.

 

mine just says "battery enabled"?
http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/6383/battery.jpg

 

^Did you download the Dell battery meter, as the first post says?

 

where to download the battery meter? can't find it in Dell website.

 

Interesting. Nice find.

 

it works on the M15x too, was posted on the M15x sub forum.

Btw nice find for the battery Meter

 

Awesome, have my laptop sitting at 45% plugged in now! +rep for you UP

 

so link to the meter? Couldn't find it on dell.

 

The link is on the first post.

 

I'm not entirely convinced with that statement. In any event, be aware this app may or may not actually disable charging. Just because there is a pop-up saying charging is disabled does not mean it is 100%.

Main point -
Keep in mind this app was never designed for use on the 11x or the 15x but for the Dell mini line. Completely different products.

With that said, use at your own risk

 

Agreed; it definitely doesn't "greatly" reduce wear. In comparison, gaming off AC will reduce its lifespan much faster than leaving it charging because batteries don't like to get discharged quickly. It does reduce some, though.

I always keep laptops for two years, and historically they have sit plugged in with battery charging nearly the whole time. After two years, well, I've never needed to replace the battery, and there hasn't been enough loss for me to even notice a difference (I really wish I could find the rating for my last laptop so I could give an exact number but can't find it anywhere).

With the ease of battery meter (just press fn-f2), it's harder to be lazy and leave it charging the whole time, though, so as little as the gain may be, it's still a gain in battery life for pretty much nothing (so thanks again OP!)

 

Drivers and Downloads

 

So this will keep my laptop at 50%. Or will I just charge to 100%, turn off charging till I reach 50% again, and then return to charging it to 100%...?

 

^It simply shuts off charging. It's up to you to do the rest. What you probably want to do is drain it to like 40-50% and then shut off charging. Just note that it does lose charge over time even when not in use, so be sure to keep an eye on the % to make sure it doesn't run too low, like maybe under 20%. Depending on how you use it, that may not be a necessary concern.

 

I'm curious - where did this 40-50% ideal range come from??

This batt charging discussion happens so often... Seriously, I have owned multiple Dell lappies now dating back to the Inspiron E1705 and always leave them plugged in. It is rare that I will move to batt only, when I do I am very careful not to deplete the charge. As i have always understood it, its the total # of charge cycles which kill your batt life. I believe the # is 300 total charge cycles - this is from a complete discharge state. My XPS M1730 batts were well over a year old and still were able to crank out the same amount of batt time. Perhaps I was just lucky... I have two batts with my M17x and the second is still sitting in the box, unused. The batt the system ships with shows no sign of losing charge time and its been plugged in more than 90% of the time - again, the system is now a year old.

I'm not a batt expert by any means but having it hover @ 40-50% (manually no less) and then charging again to 100% seems a bit borderline to me.

Leave the batt in while on AC - don't worry about the charging. When it hits close to 100% it goes into a trickle charge mode (as I understand it) - its not going to blow up your battery. Your batt is covered for a year - if it fails before then, Dell will replace it.

In the end, it is a personal choice. Not trying to flame or start a back and forth - just putting this out there for others to see and make their own determination.

 

Yeah, I don't get the fuss about it either. Leaving it on WONT overcharge the battery. I mean ok it is Dell but even Dell can make that right! I did exactly like BatBoy, just leave it on if its fully charged and the battery lasts for quite a while.

P.S. Grats on 5k posts.

 

"I'm curious - where did this 40-50% ideal range come from??"

How to prolong lithium-based batteries is one source

no idea how reputable their numbers really are, but they have a lot of charts!

Something I didn't notice the first time I read that is the storage % really only matters if you have a lot of discharge cycles, with it mattering very little if one rarely discharges (figure 2). Perhaps that is why your laptops and mine, which were plugged in most of the time, suffered little battery loss despite being at 100% pretty much all the time.

 

ahhhh... thanks for the link. Yeah, I remember many months ago looking into this whole battery thing. You can certainly find sites which support different opinions on the matter - ironically, they all claim to be expert battery folks.

In the end... its a user call.

 

Thanks for tracking down that article, corwinicre. +1 rep once I can hit you again.

 

thanks dude!

 

Gave this a go, and it works great. Just one really annoying thing about it, is it resets not only when you reboot, but also on wakeup. Has anyone found a way to change this behaviour?

 

It's a known fact that 40-50% is best for lithium batteries.
Even apple recommends leaving the batteries in their macbooks at 50%.

PROOF:

How to prolong lithium-based batteries
Lithium-ion battery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Also, even though this app is NOT designed for the m11x, it works...
You can test it by pressing the battery test button on the bottom of the laptop.

 

Be nice if Alienware could get the disable battery charging to 'stick' when it is disabled in BIOS.

M11xR1 BIOS A06, please, pretty please Alienware.

 

Is it better to let it charge up to 50% or to charge past and let it drain down to 50%? I'm guessing, the former (less "cycling").

"Gaming off of AC" != "Gaming on DC/battery" because "off of" is usually short for "while powered off of." You had me very confused there for a few minutes.

The concern is not "overcharging" reducing the lifetime. Basically, the only reason to charge over 40-50% is for maximum time on battery power when disconnected. You are wearing your battery out faster than it needs to charging it up that far when all you need is enough to show someone something in another room or take it to the garage really quickly to follow some directions at the tool bench.

 

Monster Cables have also been proven better than standard cables and Bose achieves better sound through science.

Careful of the sources you quote and the years the articles were published. Technology has come a ways since the early 2000's.

All of what you guys say is 100% correct though.

 

That's a bit illogical , since it would mean both "off AC" and "on AC" are equivalent. If "on AC" means using AC and "off" == "not on", then "off AC" means not using AC so that "off AC" == "not on AC" == "on battery" via the transitivity of equality (more specifically, equality is an equivalence relation). Sorry if I don't speak like you, and I hope it wasn't too confusing

 

I believe they are simply looking at this from a long term storage option. The argument on a partially charged battery for long term storage is actually correct. That is why you always need to charge any device you get - the battery has been stored normally with a 40% charge to reduce the effect of storage wear.

However i also don't disagree with your statement - LiIon does not like total discharges - and really 300 full cycles will stuff the battery which is why your better off limiting the number of total discharge cycles.

With 6+ hours on internal Video card I don't believe this will affect many users here even if the battery is worn you will still achieve 2 - 3 hours with 50% wear. I don't game on battery but do use the internal card regularly and like the 6 hours I get so I'm careful.

 

I get what you are saying, but "Surviving off the land" != "Surviving in the water with nothing from the land." Nothing in English makes logical sense!

Even though it doesn't make any sense, when people say that anything electrical is operated "off" something, they usually mean just the opposite.

"I'm running off AC" = plugged in
"I'm running off battery power" = unplugged

They often add an "of" after "off," which would make the intended meaning more obvious, but it's not nearly universal.

Similarly, when an alarm "goes off" or something "sets it off," it really means that the horns and strobes went active/on.

 

Is there any way to bring up the battery meter without using Fn-F2? I usually run my laptop through an external keyboard and monitor, so it would save me having to open and close the laptop lid every time I want to stop/start the battery charging. Is there an Fn equivalent on external keyboards?

 

yesss!!!!! this thing is awwsommee. i was getting so annoyed of having to go into the bios to disable it.

 

thanks!! ,i was getting tired of going bios to to this =(.

 

I don't have the app on my laptop, but I assume that for pretty much any executable you could create a shortcut to it, and add a Shortcut key to it from the Shortcut Properties dialog.

 

I want to thank OP for this, great find!!

 

i too want to thanks for this!

+1

 

There's a better app from Sony I've been trying to track down for ages, but haven't been able to. Does anyone here own a Sony Vaio?

 

Is this what you've been trying to find? http://digitalpbk.com/software/sony-vaio-battery-care-utility-download

 

That's it!! Going to see if I can get it to work with the m11x. It's lots better than btmeter.

 

Yeah I tried but it doesn't work. There's a caption somewhere that says it only works for Sony VAIO computers.

 

Thanks for this work around THS, much appreciated!

 

I managed to install the utility, but it's not functional. I did some digging and discovered that it requires the Sony shared DLL library, which I downloaded and attempted to install, but couldn't because the installer detects you're not on a Sony.

Real shame, as this util is awesome.

 

At one point Fn+F2 might have been supposed to be able to enable/disable charging on the fly. In earlier versions of the manual its function was described as such. However its current function is simply to tell you whether or not charging is enabled. This was verified months ago by AW engineering (erawneila posted about this here) and the manual was supposed to be corrected. It was never intended to be "fixed".

 

Is there a 32-bit version of this program?
?
JJ

Edit...
Nevermind...
The support.dell link contains the install which is supposed to work with 32-bit. The executable would crash in 32-bit.
JJ

Edit...
The install version works fine in windows xp, too.
JJ

 

downloaded the link in first post, has BTmeter.exe , double-click and nothing happens. what's wrong

 

Double-clicking just launches the service. You need to press Fn+F2 to trigger the program window to pop up.

 

Does this app auto start, or should I put it on my desktop so it's easy to click on each startup?

 

Omg, thank you so much for this! Before I had to restart my computer every time and go into Bios in order to disable charging.