Best Battery Practices?

Hello all,
I was curious what the best battery practices for gaming laptops such as G73SW would be. Since it has been said to not leave laptop batteries plugged in all the time to extend its life, yet gaming laptops such as these require ac power to function at full force. What is the best way to deal with this? Does it even matter these days? Is taking out the battery and running purely through AC power a viable option or does that set oneself up for potential problems down the road?

Thanks!

 

You can take out the battery and run it solely on AC power with minimal risk of degradation of the battery.

Charge the battery till 40% and then remove and store. AFAIK 40% charge storage is supposed to be the best for current retention and battery life (for storage purposes) in these laptop batteries..

 

^^What I do. I essentially run my G73JH as a semi-mobile desktop that rarely moves.

 

The problem is when you work without battery, you risk loosing any opened work in case of a power failure.

 

^^^^ Correct, hence the need for incremental as well as full backups.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/8331177-post2.html

OP http://forum.notebookreview.com/not...icles/444615-remove-battery-when-not-use.html

 

Thanks everyone, great info here!

 

Same in my case, I seldom use my G73JH battery as it always sits on my desk (it's quite heavy to put it in your lap when on bed or somewhere else, you don't want to shake the beast a lot when you have a mechanical HDD).

Just as what they have said, if you're going to keep your battery for a while, leave about 40% charge (as stated on batteryuniversity site). Also, when you're on battery and a/c not connected, try to avoid heavy gaming or other stuff that would need a lot of cpu/gpu power as this would result to a high discharge rate. Reducing LCD brightness or switching off the wifi when not needed lessens discharge rate too.

High battery discharge rate increases the temperature of the battery a lot, and high temperature for battery is the number 1 killer of it's charge capacity, lifespan and charge/discharge cycle.

If you are to store away the battery and operate on a/c quite often, then having a UPS would be very beneficial if you're concerned about power outage. I use one and it saved my beast from shutting down prematurely more than a dozen times already when I'm not on battery.

 

Instead of running your battery into the ground you can get a small UPS for a lot less (or even "free after rebate") than the cost of a new G73 battery.

Like others have said, keeping a less than fully charged battery in storage when you're gonna be plugged in most of the time is the best way to save the battery for when you actually need it. I've heard of people actually storing their laptop batteries in the freezer but honestly I don't think extreme measures like that really make a difference. Keep in mind that lithium-ion batteries have a limited number of charge/recharge cycles somewhere in the mid-hundreds so if you are continuously depleting and charging it up to 100% this will really reduce the lifespan of the battery. If you are going to take the route of keeping your battery in storage most of the time, make sure you "exercise" it 2 to 4 times a year. Put it back in your laptop, draw it down to 25% (no lower), charge it back to 100%, and then run it down to 40% or whatever level you store it at.

If you take care of your battery, it can last for 10 years or more.