How to properly take care of a notebook battery??

Hello,

I recently asked Dell to replace me the battery of my laptop and so they did. It was replaced last Friday. Now my question comes regarding the proper care of the battery since the old one exhibited a rapid decline and this one seems to be doing about the same in less than a week.

Now the previous one was worked, meaning that I unplugged it once it reached 100% and worked it down till 25% or so. I know this wasn't adequate now, so this one is working plugged in all the time. I have read the site of batteryuniversity.com and it still doesn't answer my question. So is it adequate to have my laptop on AC all the time? I know the battery won't charge once full, but whenever it unplugs, the 100% drops to 98% (last saturday), 97% (monday) and today it dropped to 94% after just unplugging it. Is it rapidly dying again? When at office, temperature of operation is around mid 30's-low 40's sometimes peaking at low 50s when scrolling down large Excel files and at home it's around low 40's - mid 50's (all Celsius) so it's not that hot (I know lithium-ion batteries are heat sensitive). So can anybody tell me how to properly take care of the battery so it doesn't deteriorate as fast as the previous one??

PD: Taking it out is not an option as I sometimes need to move the laptop away from the desk when running to meetings or stuff and there are blackouts at home so I have to leave the battery for these kind of cases.

 

really the only thing you need to do is keep the battery (and by extension the entire notebook) cool; i.e., within normal operating temps.

if you continually discharge and recharge your battery, it will die earlier than expected. your dell batt is estimated good for about 500 cycles therefore if you keep discharging/recharghing unnecessarily, you're only hurting your batt's lifespan.

fully discharging/recharging your batt once every few weeks will help keep the calibration operating correctly.

the concept of having to condition your battery is now obsolete.

1. keep it cool
2. don't discharge/recharge unless necessary or unless you're doing it to reset the calibration.

that's it.

 

Thanks for the info. That's what I thought I should do, but seeing that after unplugging it rapidly goes down to 94 started to worry me since I'm not constantly plugging/unplugging and leaving it on AC all the time. So keeping it cool means low 30s? low 40s? low 50s? I live in a very hot place so environment temps usually go around 36-40C and with no A/C at home.

 

you may want to look into a cooling pad then, just to keep airflow going.

i also wouldn't worry too much about daily fluctuations in battery life 'estimates'. remember, they are just estimates.

instead of checking daily, try checking weekly or biweekly or after you do a discharge.

monitoring it daily will make you pull your hair out.