Notebook Battery Guide

davidfor I agree and Li-Ion do not suffer any form of memory effect. I also ignored as his answer was addressed a post or two up.

 

does any one know any thing about adding a second battery to a system that original does not suport one.. .. is a regulator or any thing needed.. and does any one have guides of the wiring of battery's to the PSU.



This is my plan.. to add another 8 cell to a m860tu making it a 16cell 15inch gaming laptop. And prob havening the best performance to battery life ratio in the industry

 

Sry if the answers were already posted and for asking such a noob question about battery....I want to know how u guys treat ur new battery right out of the box

 

Chen,

OK, I didn't explicitly state what I did, but I thought it was implied...

All I do is put the battery in the laptop and plug it in. I let it charge completely while I setup the laptop. After that I just leave the battery in and use the laptop as I need to. I haven't bothered to do a separate calibration charge as I am frequently drain the battery when I use it during my commute.

The way I use a laptop battery is based on the research I did when the first battery died and I found out how expensive it was to replace it.

David

 

heath, it is possible, but it will not be easy, and it may cause you a lot of headaches to do.
You will have to buy a second battery for the system. I say this because you will need to use a battery which has the same voltage and amperage per cell.
You will have to disassemble the battery in order for this to work. (because the battery is most likely too thick to be put into the optical drive bay).
You will have to do some soldering to make this one work. You will have to essentially solder wires to the motherboard, for the second battery to charge.
This soldering will have to be done on the port which connects the battery to the system. On each of the leads of that port, you will have to solder a wire, and run it directly to the lead of the second battery. You will have to match them up, because you will essentially be making a splitter, and putting the two batteries in parallel. This can be done, but it will be hard, and will void your warranty. However once it is done, you will have essentially double the battery life of every other 860tu owner. However charging the system up may be a problem. You will be putting twice the load on the charging circuit, and that may cause the chraging circuit to burn out, thus making all batteries useless and unchargeable. I am not sure if you like that consequence, but it will happen most likely after the mod, since the chip will not be able to source enough curent to charge both batteries at the same time.

K-TRON

 

I think i'll add something..
The whole point of "calibrating" is not only so the windows meter is accurate, it also allows windows to go into standby/hybernate at the right time. If it thinks the battery is at 5% but its really at 20%, you'll be loosing valuable battery time.

Also, the best way to do a full discharge is to boot and enter bios, then just leave this running until it dies. This is better than booting windows because this will actually discharge the battery to zero, as windows will shut down before this point (whatever you have set under power options).

~Itomix

 

^^Point understood but it will not drain to zero even in BIOS. And that is a good thing.

 

is there any software that can keep the battery at a 40% charge? I downloaded smartbattery but that didn't do anything at all. I'm thinking that since I'm using a 64bit OS that's why smartbattery didn't work. Any suggestions? Also the plug going into my laptop is very loose and that's how it came new so I leave the battery in so in case the plug pops out my laptop won't shut off.

 

buuuummmpppp

 

no, you cant keep the charge always at 40%, I dont know why you would want to do that anyways.
A battery will charge as long as their is a potential gradient in voltage. Aka when the battery is at say 12.1volts and it is rated for 14.4volts, their is a 2.3v potential in voltage. As long as their is a potential, the battery will charge. their is no way to just stop the battery from charging, and force it to keep the cells at 40%, it just doesnt work that way.

Keeping the cells fully charged and in my system works for me, and I have batteries which are 8 years old, and still work great.

K-TRON

 

Hi,
I thought I'd just quickly ask, my battery in my laptop seems to be totally dead - it shows up as 100% charge under Windows but the instant I unplug the power, the laptop shuts down (i.e. there is no charge in the battery at all). Is there any way I can attempt to refresh the battery at least so I can use it as a backup power source for a few minutes? I'm not asking for much just so that it's more useful than a paperweight.

 

Are there any negative effects of leaving the laptop on AC power (charging) for a substantial amount of time after it is already done charging?

 

Keeping it plugged in is not really bad, but its a good idea to give your battery some exercise at least once a month.
Obviously if you want extreme life span, remove it and run the laptop on just AC, but I think thats just going too far.

From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion#Guidelines_for_prolonging_Li-ion_battery_life

 

JesterX good info.

But wiki link?

Deep cycle does not damage Li-Ion vs any other type. It is simply not needed so should not be done other than away from an outlet. Two 100% to 50% discharges equals one deep cycle. No extra magical danger/problem. There is no reason to not do other than if not necessary.

 

Ok, hows this:

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

Discharging the battery down to almost nothing is not good for it.

 

Yea? It says nothing against or different than anything I said. Do you understand that? Do you not get it it? I will continue to try and explain. What part are not getting? How about you give me a link I have not read 20 times?

I don't want to be a dick but I use Bat U as a footnote. If you want to know post back.

 

So can anyone help me in my attempt to rejuvenate my battery which seemingly ceased to hold any charge at all? Even if it's just a bit, to get it to work as a 5-second UPS.

 

A truly deep cycle discharge means the battery level is at "0%". Your laptop will hibernate/standby/shutoff automatically at 5% battery level thus doesn't count as a true deep cycle discharge.

In a laptop, 99.9999% of the time, you cannot discharge the battery to the point where it damages the battery. There's no effect whether you charge at 50% or 1%.

"* Avoid frequent full discharges because this puts additional strain on the battery. Several partial discharges with frequent recharges are better for lithium-ion than one deep one. Recharging a partially charged lithium-ion does not cause harm because there is no memory."
Again, full discharge means going below 0% which isn't really possible for a laptop.

 

No your batt is dead.

Wow word games? I don't have time. Happy you are just learning. Deep cycle is not a "deep discharge" and that is fatal. And as you said it does not happen. I thought 3% but well not me worth arguing about. Do you have a clue as to why you would not want to run down and store? You still do not get it but you might in time?

 

No, how about you just stop being a dick now?

If you want to get into the technicalities, your choice, leave me out of it.

 

Hi.

I have a bran-new 66000mah battery 14.8volts , my laptop is in my sig.

Wear level determined by , nhc and mmonitor

First charge wear level is 0%

Second discharge-charge wear level 3%

Third discharge-charge wear level now 7%

So what is wrong with my battery , I have only had it 3 days!

Thanks

John.

 

Nothing is wrong. Come on super girl? You have to give it a couple shots to figure out?

 

Do you mean it takes the battery a couple of cycles to figurer out it`s wear level?

If so what do you consider an acceptable level for a new battery?

Thanks

John.

 

I really do not know and this is a very big issue. I do not want to be funny in any way. With everything I have read anything under 10% seems great. But I have not studied?

 

My battery Wear is now showing as 15% after only a week!!!!

 

Are you using rightmark to get these wear levels?
If so try an older version and see if it reports the same thing.
If the wear is really going down than their may be a internal short in the battery, or something wrong with the charging system on your laptop.

If the battery is still lasting as long on battery as it did when their was 0% wear, than it is a software reading issue.

K-TRON

 

I have been using MobileMeter , what is this rightmark util?

 

Well if you download CPU rightmark there is a battery tab. If you open the battery tab, it will tell you the battery wear. If these values match, than maybe your battery indeed has a problem, but if the wear levels are different, mobilemark may be causing you to stress more than you should be.

K-TRON

 

here you go!!

 

If the battery did have wear, than next to the charged capacity it would say "(wear: 15%)

Obviously yours does not say that, so it looks like mobilemeter was reading your battery wrong

K-TRON

 

But

Have you seen the difference between the "designed capacity" 97680 and the "fully charged capacity" 82525

EDIT : I just tried NOTEBOOK HARDWARE CONTROL and it also says battery wear is 15%

 

ooh, I missed that, well than it could be a problem with your battery. You bought the battery used right?
Well have you contacted toshiba to see if their was a recall on that battery. If their is, you may be able to get a new one.
If you state in an email that the wear level increases implies an internal short, which is potentially deadly, than they may let you send your battery in for a replacement. But i dont know if that will work on a unwarranted battery.

K-TRON

 

The battery is new, but it`s a non-OEM , I replaced an 4400mah 8cell with a 6600mah 12 cell.

I will try and contact the seller!

 

I sent the battery back and received the replacement today, After the first full charge the battey is showing 0% wear, but the one i sent back showed 0% wear for the first charge but went to 15% after only 4-5 discharge/charges.

I dont think i will be doing any full discharges on this one!!

 

im confused, some sites say that its okay to leave the battery on while the AC adaptor is connected and some say to take it out?

 

Heat is an li-ion battery`s biggest enemy, if you cpu and gpu is heating up your battery it will have a shorter life.

But if you remove you battery and you have a power cut, you notebook will just die, and you will lose anything you have been working on.

So it`s a catch 22, unless you buy a desktop pc power UPS and run you notebook of that.

Regards

John.

 

ohh okay, so i better remove the battery when im using the laptop at home, i rarely get power cuts anyway. thanks

 

I have a dv5t that gets quite hot while I'm gaming and I haven't purchased a cooler as of yet. I very rarely get powercuts and it's only really when it's stormy (and if it is stormy I'll either use the battery or come off the laptop completely...)

I'd like to know, will disconnecting at 10-20% charge and running games just with the adapter keep my my laptop cooler?

 

My quick question is do any of you regularly put your batteries in the freezer to preserve the life of them? Just curious because I actually read an article on why that works the other day and I think that I'm going to start doing this.

 

Firstly, freezing the battery can damage them. The info I have seen said that sealed in the fridge but not frozen.

Personally, I have never done this as I use the battery almost every day.
But, the arguments for removing the battery is that the laptop will heat the batttery up and that will cause the reduced life. Anytime I have pulled the battery out of my laptops when they have been fully charged for a while (charging or discharging the battery will raise their temperature so I wait for this the temperature to settle after the charging has finished) the battery feels like it is at room temperature. Because of this I am not worried about this affect. Yes, storing it at 4C would be better than 20C but I would prefer to have the UPS backup capabilites.

David

 

The recommendation of charging the battery for 12 hours at the first use is correct?
I mean when you get new laptop\battery, if it's necessary to charge them fully 12 hours before using?

THX!

 

For LiIon batteries, there is not initial "conditioning needed". Just put it in and let it charge while you setup the laptop. If you need to unplug the laptop before it hits 100%, don't worry about it. And once it hits 100% charge, not extra time will change things because the charging circuit will turn off.

David

 

pretty helpful!

 

Thanks mate!

I saw this "tip" somewhere, I guess who wrote it is not that expert.

 

hi everyone! I just signed up today and I would like to become a frequent member on here. anyways, here's my first question.

I just got a new laptop battery. Is it possible for someone to give me a few tips on how to "start" the battery correctly and how to maintain it. I would greatly appreciate it!

 

My opinion: Put it in the laptop and forget about it.

Have you read the guide at the beginning of the thread? It answers nearly everything you need to know. Once you have read it, you need to make a decision about whether to remove and store the battery separately when not in use. To me, there is no point in doing this if the battery will be used even as little as once a fortnight. And the advantage of having the battery in the laptop at all times far outways the eventual reduction in life of the battery.

One thing I can't see in the guide is anything about "starting" the battery. LiIon batteries don't need anything special to be done to them. Just put it in the laptop and let it charge. You don't even need to wait for it to reach 100% charge before starting to use it.

David

 

How cheap/easy is it to get a second battery and use it.

 

Do I need to let it die completely after a full recharge for the first time? (Or is this just a myth that I heard somewhere?)

 

Why haven't laptop manufacturers and engineers done the following, it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to implement:

1) Give the option to either leave the battery at 40% charge or charge it to full when the lappy is plugged in. Users can leave it at 40% charge if they know they won't be taking it mobile for a while, and then right click battery icon in taskbar and select "charge to full" when they're preparing to take it on the go. Alternatively, they can set it to always charge to full when plugged in.

2) Rather than having power run through the battery while plugged in causing it to heat up and slowly lose life, divert power straight to laptop as if the battery isn't connected at all. The problem here is that if we did this and there is a sudden power loss, the laptop would immediately shut off. The solution is capacitors in the power module of the lappy. In the event of a power loss, the capacitors keep the laptop on, and the laptop detects that there is no more power going to the capacitors and quickly kickstarts the battery.

Seems like the two combined would be good for conserving battery life especially in desktop replacements that aren't used mobile too often.

 

That advice is for older Nickel Metal Hydrides. You can if you wish for Lithium Ion Batteries, but in my experience draining my Lithium Ion batteries below 10% had caused permanent damage. I can't remember exactly, but I lost almost 15% in 3 deep discharges over a 3 week span. Now, I never drain past 25% and have barely lost any life on the battery in the last 6 months.