Running mine without a battery?

Hey guys! So the other day I decided to actually read through the crap that dell gives you (safety and precautions stuff) and in there it said with the new lithium ion batteries its actually better to not let them die and keep them above 40%. In turn I decided the best way to do this is by charging them fully then just taking them out and letting my computer run off of the outlet. Worked so far for me and this will prevent charging/discharging my batteries constantly. Anyone else done this? Any negatives to this (other than the obvious, which is if power is disconnected it will turn off). My computer is a studio XPS 1640 by the way.

 

i dont understand. if your battery is 100% doesn't the computer use power straight from the outlet anyways? so it wouldn't be discharging.

 

I don't know the answer to that question, I would assume, but the electricity is still running through the battery which I assume would cause some sort of wear. Haha I don't know if this is better but it eases my mind

 

When you run your machine on AC power, the battery should theoretically be idling almost all the time. The machine will occasionally top off the battery if the charge drops below a certain threshold (which it inevitably will, because laptop batteries can't hold a full charge indefinitely).

I don't know what the threshold is specifically, but I'm fairly certain it's quite high (above 90 percent, probably?) and the added discharge/charge cycles may adversely affect the life of the battery.

In short, no real disadvantages in running without the battery; you'll just lose that "free UPS" if your power goes out, etc.

 

sounds good to me! haha thanks for the quick responses! I think I'll try this out for a little while, if it's too much of a pain to have to take the battery on and off I may not continue, but if not then I'm not hurting anything eh?

 

You aren't gaining anything either..

 

I do it cause heat from a laptop will Kill a battery very fast

 

I dont get this. Ran my M1710 off the mains with battery in for 3 years. RARELY used it on battery. and yet i still got the average 1hr 30 out of the battery on power saver plan for websurfing and junk. Not sure it makes a huge difference!

 

The battery will deteriorate with use over time. But it will also deteriorate if you leave it out of the machine and rarely use it. The portability of laptops is nice, even around the house. You would be turning your machine into a small and overpriced desktop if you didn't take advantage of the battery for day to day use with minimal (if any) benefits in terms of battery longevity.

It's true that you should let Li ion batteries discharge below a certain level. But they also like to be partially discharged and recharged every now and then. This is typically the usage pattern you will get if your laptop spends most of its time near outlets.

Stop worrying