Battery..to charge or not to charge?

Well the battery in my Acer is pretty much done. It wont run the laptop for more than 30 minutes, so I called Acer and voila, they sent me a new one without hassle and it got to my house in 2 days.

Anyway, I leave my laptop plugged in 99% of the time, so it doesnt matter right now if the battery is working or not, so I still have the bad battery in.

If I want this new one to last a long time, do I charge it and leave it on my desk, or just leave it uncharged like it is?

Also, what charging/discharging techniques should I use to prolong the life of the battery? The original only lasted a year.

 

O boy, so much to answer. Theres a great guide on these forums somewhere. In the guide section. Right over there ----->.

 

i find that the batteries will discharge by themselves even if they are not being used, ie sitting on a shelf. My adivce is to charge it to 100% and then use it till it's drained to ~7-11% and then do charge it again. do this at least 3 times. then charge it to ~40% and store it if you don't want to use it. be sure to check it periodically to make sure it still is holding a charge.

hope this helps
Fry

 

If you want to make the battery last longer of the course of its life, and your mostly using the notebook on Ac powe, then remove the battery and place it in a cool place. Leaving it at a 40% charge, and in an environment of 25 C, will mean that in the course of a year, the average capacity loss should only be 4%. Have a look at the Battery Guide for more information.

 

The battery guide is a must read. But to save you a little time. If you are going try and save the new one store at 40% charge in as cool of place as you can. If that means the fridge in a zip lock bag that is up to you. Your battery w/age and wear no matter what you do. I would cycle (discharge/charge) the new one at least a couple of times just to make sure it is working.

Edit: I type slow.

 

I've seen posts here that says the notebook will stop charging the battery when the charging has completed, thus we don't have to unplug the battery anymore even when the notebook is plug in to ac power.

 

Good question. However, since it will naturally lose charge, it will eventually set a trigger once the power reaches a certain level to charge it again.

If it is true that the battery stops charging, then is this better for the battery than taking it out and storing it?

 

Well i got my new one hooked up. It took well over 3 hours to charge it while i was doing stuff on the computer.

I'm unplugged now just waiting to let it drain to 40%. Its been a while and it's still 90%. It says 3 hours remaining in its life, and thats while watching a dvd.

amazing!

 

Sounds good! but fully drain it a few times before you drain to 40% and store! If you are not going to store forget about 40%!

 

Batteries are rated in charge cycles (e.g. 800 charge cycles for a battery). Laptops begin charging the battery after it reaches a certain charge level (like 97%). Then the laptop tops it off at 100% again. Therefore, leaving your battery in your laptop does wear it more than storing it in a cool place, because leaving it in uses up charge cycles.

Batteries are always using up their charge, whether they are in your laptop or not. Because of this, when your battery is in your laptop, it will always eventually be topped off.

 

Well, I must just be lucky then. My HP notebook is almost 4 years old and still gets over 45 minutes of battery time. It got 1 1/2 hours when new. My Toshiba is over 1 1/2 years old and gets over 3 hours. It got about 3 1/2 hours when new. I have never taken the battery out of either one of them.

 

I am at 1 year plugged in almost all the time I've lost a few minutes. I've done about 40 or 50 full cycles. 6 month estimate is wrong IMO.

 

eh, guess i need to do more research then