M11x - The infamous FN+F2 feature

No it will not reduce the battery life if the battery is fully charged and still plugged in, IMO of course.

Laptop batts like any other go bad eventually. Best advice I can give on this topic is, try not to drain the battery completely and when @ home, leave the battery in the system on AC.

On 3 systems, the XPS M1710, XPS M1730 and the M17x - I have never had a battery go bad in the sense I couldn't maintain a decent charge.

 

I would love to see it enable/disable as well!

 

I think we all would like that added feature Chewie. Since nags confirmed the manual is incorrect and its not an actual feature, there may be hardware limitations which make it impossible to implement. We'll have to wait and see.

 

So batboy, just to clarify... even if I don't turn it off via the bios, keeping it plugged in to AC with the battery will not damage the battery too much? Or should I still disable it via the bios?

 

I just allow my battery to finish charging and then disable it in the bios till I need to charge again.

 

but does it auto stop the battery once it's fully charged like Macs or some Asus's do? Or is it still using the battery unless you disable it in the bios. That's annoying since you would have to restart your computer when it hits a full charge =S

 

thanx batboy. glad to know i'm not destroying my battery just cuz im to lazy to disable charging in the bios

 

I'm not a battery engineer so I cant give you the technical aspect of it. What I can say is, I have never had an issue with leaving my laptop plugged in 24x7 (with the battery in) and have not noticed a horribly decreased charge time as a result.

Sure your battery will wear out - all batteries due. Will it wear faster if you leave it plugged in? I doubt it. I always encourage people to decide for themselves... its your system. If you want to kill the battery charge via the BIOS, then feel free. I promise nobody will be angry

 

Well I'm just saying that if there is no noticeable difference, it would mean that alienware has a built in system's management system that bypasses the battery once it's fully charged while it's still on AC power. Then at that point, there really is no need to 'disable' it in the bios and rendering that feature useless because it essentially does the same thing.

But I guess there are those who have the battery at say 40% and plug into the AC and don't want it to be charged at 100% but I have no idea why you would want to do that.

Regardless, thanks for your experience and input on the situation.

 

Well if the BIOS disables charging when the battery is full, then I suppose it's a moot point to argue about, since I'm mainly worried about leaving things plugged in 24/7 and having it drain battery life more than it would if it were disabled

 

I don't know I just manually do it when I feel the battery is about full. Usually I reboot and disable charging at about 95% charged. It's not really a hassle for me to reboot since the boot time is actually quite fast.

 

the point is that we don't know for sure? If somebody from alienware could confirm?

 

Strange. Mine disables fine via bios, but after you unplug it and run it on batt for a while and then reboot the system, it goes back to charging the battery again...

 

Mine too... a little earlier in the thread it was explained that if it did not, you could have a dead battery and not be able to charge it since you wouldn't be able to get into the bios and tell it to start charging without pulling the bios battery.

My thought was you could always plug it in, and then enable charging in the bios.

 

after reboot I noticed it resets it too which is fine cuz I needed to charge it haha

 

Yes after unplugging it from AC it does reset because the systems probably thinks you need to recharge anyway. Simply rebooting it without unplugging doesn't cause a reset, it's still disabled.

 

Given the way the manual is written and similar Fn+F2 works in other systems, I still think it's a bug unless there is something special in motherboard that allows for it (rather like multi-zone keyboard lights which we don't have on M11x because of hardware limitations).

Honestly, though, I'd rather AW work on fixing fan/GPU switching issues and working on getting us updated drivers that enable CUDA in CoreAVC and Flash 10.1 Beta 3.

 

Yeah, I'm aware of the problem with the manual. Not sure how that made it out. Still looking into this.

 

This is as designed. If you leave your system plugged in, it will remain disabled through reboots/etc. Once you have unplugged the power, this will switch back to enabled. As mentioned, the BIOS assumes that you would want to charge up a depleted battery.

 

so the fn f2 wont work for me with a04 bios ... this is a bug?? cause seems that nobody can make it work

 

It is not a bug. FN+F2 is not supposed to disable battery charging. Never was designed to do so.

As Alienware has confirmed this is not a bug and it was a typo in the manual, this thread is being closed.

 

just posting to show interest in this feature. i want to be able to disable charging from quickly pressing FN + F2

 

actually batboy erawneila told me he would look into it to make it a feature if people showed their concern. He asked me to open this thread in the first place.

 

AFAIK all modern li-ion batteries have a chip on them that controls the charging based on two factors: internal battery temperature and (obviously) battery charge. unlike older ni-mh and other types of batteries, the li-ion cells are designed to last a given number of full charge/discharge cycles (varies from 300 to 500). this is because the chemical reactions inside the batteries can occur a given number of times, and this is also affected by the temperature. it's common to see li-ion batteries stop charging before they're 100% full, and soon after the temperature is a bit lower it starts to charge again. the same microchip that does this also stops charging the battery when it's full. you can verify by turning on your notebook with the battery fully charged and the notebook charger plugged in the wall. several hours after turning your computer on, the temperature of the battery will be the same (despite a little heat generated by other components being absorbed and making the battery seems a little warmer that when the computer was off). but if you do the same test with the battery discharged, you can verify that while charging it gets hot. in this moment your battery is being worn out, as the chemical reactions are occuring and the higher the temperature the higher the number of molecules in the cells that will be unable to do the chemical reactions again to store/release energy in the future charge/discharge cycles.

 

it works, you need to set it up in bios, but after boot it will reset

 

Looks like engineering is suggesting that you use the BIOS feature for this. I don't believe that they are going to add the FN-F2 capability to this system.

 

can't believe a machine made in 2010 and suposed to be a hi-tech product relies on the user to tell it to stop charging an already full battery. my fears of what could happen to Alienware after it's aquisition by Dell are starting to become true?

 

It already stops charging when it reaches 95-100% of charge. It's if you want to stop charging before then.

 

hmmm.... then maybe it's designed to allow you to avoid it being charged over 40%?

now I'm changing my point of view. if you always have a power outlet near you, and rarely use the laptop in the battery (that's my case), the best to do is to keep the battery level around 40%. if this feature really works, it allows the user to fully charge the battery only when really needed. sounds good. I will check this when my r2 arrives.

without this type of feature the best practice is to keep the battery always charged and avoid discharges whenever possible but it's not the best for the battery (40% is)

 

the fn + f2 do work, but you need to set it on bios... but after a boot it will stop work

 

everytime you do a cold or warm boot you have to re-enable the feature in the BIOS?

it looks like something to be addressed by a BIOS update. does this happen in both models (r1 and r2)?

or maybe it is a feature to be used when you are about to leave the machine unused for a long time (an thus have to stop charging when the battery is about 40% full, but only once in this case)?

 

now after rereading BatBoy's post I think this should be the case here

 

It will remain set if you remain plugged in. Once you unplug the AC adapter, it resets, assuming that you'll need to charge the battery when you plug back in.

 

so now, what's the ideal moment to stop charging?
some say 40% is the best, what's really the best?
maybe fully charged since the new computers have a fully charged battery

or i am guessing wrong here