If you dont Discharge Laptop Battery Every So often...

I know that this has been a controversial subject here on the forums, I finally found what looks like the most credable answer we will get.

This is from PC Worlds "Busting the Biggest PC Myths"

Myth: If you don't periodically run your laptop batteries down to zero, you'll lose battery life.

This belief stems from a syndrome that plagued old-fashioned laptop batteries--the bulky nickel cadmium variety. With those batteries, performance degraded if the battery wasn't periodically discharged fully. (If you use a NiCd-powered laptop, discharge the battery every three months.)

Newer laptops use lithium ion batteries that have no memory, says Isidor Buchmann, the founder of Cadex, a Canadian manufacturer of battery chargers and analyzers. They don't need to be discharged to maintain their life, he says. Lithium ion batteries prefer a partial rather than a full discharge. Nonetheless, every 30 charges or so, you should run them down to zero. This measure isn't to preserve the battery but to recalibrate the fuel gauge--the indicator on the laptop screen that shows how much battery juice and time remain.

 

I love memory free batteries. The full discharge thing was a pain in the past for rechargeables. From what i have read on lithium batteries, there is infact no memory effect, so they are very user friendly in almost every way. Great for iPods and notebooks alike.

 

Nice. Thanks for digging that up.

 

and

Yea I know, I had no idea whether the Li-Ion batteries had memory or not, thats why I dug this up. You would think it would be common sense to everyone thats into notebooks, especially people on notebookreview.com, including me might I add. I guess it hasnt been a concern for people. Well hope this answers some of your questions everyone.

 

Very true, and thanks for posting.

 

Here's the source: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

That link should really be stickied with a summary. I post the link in nearly every battery thread i come across and ppl still are confused and continue to post wrong info in the same thread.

 

Isn't it bad for the a laptop to drain to zero without a proper shut down. Do you guys mean just close to zero and then recharge?

 

It depends how your notebook handles the situation. When my Sattelite reaches the critical battery level, it puts itself into hibernation.

No, you don't really want your battery to be totally exhausted and fail in the middle of running windows.

 

While on the topic of discharging batteries...

I've had my w3v for about a year now and my 8-cell battery currently shows 42% wear according to mobile meter. Everytime I run the battery down to less than 10% and recharge I seem to wear the battery another percent or two. It seems like there was a sudden increase in battery wear since I never noticed signficant battery life decrease until the last week or two. Is this normal behavior or is my battery about to die for good?

 

If we are talking about Lithium Ion batteries, then that is a myth, they don't form a memory.

however, you will want to make sure that you completely discharge your battery every 20-30 charges, your notebook basicly has a 'gas gauge' and if you don't discharge it every once in a while you'll find that it might say...hybernate before your battery is actually out.

With Lithium Ion's in fact constant full discharges cause the battery life to go down and it does better off with partial use and then a recharge.

 

I usually wait until the windows said 1 minute left then I quickly hibernate my laptop but I still after 2 months of usage I get the wear level 2%