Issue with all my Lith-Ion batteries

I use my laptops mostly plugged in all the time, cause I'm either watching movies on it, or games. cpu intensive things that don't last long on battery. I also don't travel much.

However I am finding after about a year an a half, the batteries lose their ability to accurately tell their charge. My current dell will slowly go to about %75, and then drop suddenly to %8, also its only getting about an hour of charge with the cpu idling on its lowest speed step. BOTH my older toshiba laptops have batteries that no longer hold much of a charge. They both will shut off the system. The battery stops sending power a minute or so after the plug is pulled, and because the battery reports %100-%90 power, the laptop dosnt standby, and so you actually lose data.

This is something I don't hear often about lithium ions, they are supposed to be immune from the memory effects of old. Is this just the dark secret of all lithium ions when they get past their 1-2 year mark?

 

Lithium Ion degrades over the years, not per charge. I have no real idea what their lifespan is. To me three years seems the maximum. My old Pentium 4 laptop had when it was new a batterylife of about 2,5 to 3 hours and after three years of almost daily use (on batterypower) about 1 hour.

When you leave your laptop plugged in the AC it's generally better to drain your battery to about 40% of charge and put it in a cold place like the fridge. This could be a result of keeping it plugged in. Try running on batterypower till you get the low battery warning. Turn of your notebook and recharge. Then repeat this, maybe a couple of times. This worked for me once with a laptop. The battery seemed to recover.

Some manufacturers sell heavy duty batteries. My XPS M1210 has been fitted with a 9-cell heavy duty battery. It should be more durable, but since the battery is just over a year old I can't really say anything yet.

 

I live in florida, I would think taking the battery out of the fridge would fry it due to condensation?

 

Li-ion batteries all (no matter who makes them) degrade both over time and over use. Cycle life for typical chemsitry Li-Ion is at best 300 ish full cycles (some may well go longer, depends on what you define as a useful charge). Extremes in temperature will degrade them even faster. Some of the newer Li-Ion chemistries (such as the new doped lithium iron phosphate systems) have greatly extended cycle times, as well as faster recharging times, but at the cost of less capacity.

Just remember that there is alot of chemistry going on inside those batteries. Over time the materials degrade, physical seals may break, corrode, leak etc. You will lose at least 15-20% of your battery capacity the first year if not much more, and it will only get worse. The reactions inside the batteries that provide your power are reversible, to an extent, but nothing is ever 100% efficient. Everytime you recharge the system, it will lose some of its capacity, over time it will be rendered useless, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to avoid it.

Battery fuel gauges have a hard time with Li-Ion batteries in general as well. The discharge curve for a Li-Ion battery is relatively flat until its nearly fully discharged, then it drops precipitously. Some guages are vastly better than others in predicting capacity, it is enormously complex to get one to really be accurate. Some systems give you the option to recalibrate your battery fuel guage, if you still get bad results, your battery is likely toast.

You may find Secrets of Battery Runtime helpful.

 

If you look at the poll here, most people tend to keep the battery on when using AC power.

I feel it is not a good idea to expose the notebook by removing the battery as it increases the notebook's exposure to dust and what not!

Further, no notebook or battery manufacturer recommends that the battery be removed when the notebook is on AC power.