"The Last Word on Battery Longevity in Gadgets"

The Last Word on Battery Longevity in Gadgets

 

Excellent article!

+Rep dude!

Mr. Mysterious

 

Did anyone else not find that useful? Personally, I leave my battery in my computer all the time to act as an UPS. After 3 years, I still have 90+% of my battery life...

 

Yea I agree the article doesn't really give us something new. Since the charging is tied to BIOS, you would need a an upgrade to maybe lower the voltage from 4.2 to 4.1 per cell, which would give the best results at lowering battery degradation. Lots of luck in that department.

 

However, you're not recommending other do that...right?

 

Article is going rampant on batteries. Nothing new AT ALL, just a e-peen article saying "YEAH I GUESSED IT FIRST HAR HAR HAR"...

On better (ACTUALLY) SCIENTIFIC NEWS
Here's an article from 2003 (edited last in 2006):
How to prolong lithium-based batteries
Very awesome stuff.
If you want the whole banquet of information:
Part One - Basics every battery user should know

 

Krane,

Your not gonna recommend people put them in the freezer are you?

 

Yeah I agree with others here...that article really didnt answer anything and if anything just brought up more questions...

 

On other news my gateway m6862 which has had about 2 years already has still 87% remaining out of it's original max charge. Guess what, I leave it plugged in...

What I found that messes it up more is the draining of the battery completely. That really wrecks havoc on the battery. Draining/charging about 4 times reduced the max charge by 3% in about a 2 week period.

Read the articles I just put up post #6...

 

And I just learned I'm a complete noob. Thanks.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Whoa! Tone it down a little on that linkage

 

Only if they order them by the dozen. For the rest of use, they'll won't be out of service long enough for that procedure to be of any consequence.

 

Batteries work great as a UPS, I also leave mine plugged in all the time. Whether that degrades it or not is inconsequential to me, as batteries will degrade over time either way, it's unavoidable.

 

As stated above, I would definitely recommend using the battery as an UPS. Batteries are meant to be used...

 

I agree totally 100%.

 

I agree that you agree, then I double it by agreeing with Sgogeta4.

 

What I disagree with is putting the batteries in the fridge or freezer like some people want to do. It just makes no sense to do that.

Now if Crimsoned agrees we have a double agreement, and if Sgogeta4 Comes in and agrees he will double that.

Okay this is getting ridiculous now, I should just stop.

 

I disagree with putting batteries in freezers... However fridges are okay, if you need to store your Li-On battery for some weird reason..

 

As batteries, not UPS. That duty is best left to a dedicated UPS device, which are better at it, and costs half as much.

 

UPS use lithium ion batteries too. I can't bring UPS to where I'm studying since it's too heavy.

 

A true dedicated UPS will not only supply uninterupted power but also take the power hit in both brown out or power spiked conditions. This of course along with short protection etc. A laptop battery only will supply power in a brown out etc. If there is a spike and/or a short you do not protect the brick, battery, power board or any other component inside or connected to the system.

In the end all you have is a battery backup, not system protection as with an UPS.........

 

"has no proof", "not enough testing", "I was wrong", "moderation", "my best guess", as well as mentioning a half-dozen well-known variables........

The author doesn't even mention the biggest problem which is the wide variety of battery chemistries and battery manufacturers which get multiplied by the number of gadgets and again by design changes during the life of a product. In the face of that it's hard to give anyone advice on how to treat their batteries.

It's certainly a well-written article from an English composition and editorial view, but there isn't much substance or new info there.

 

Oh no, devolving into take it out/ leave it in.......

However, I agree with all those who find the article a little underwhelming.

 

That's what surge protectors are for.

 

Exactly. Besides most UPS have poor protection.

 

Wow... praise him..... praise him... i discovered that method of preserving battery power 2 years ago without getting told that this was the new method and following the rest of the flock.

 

Now you're being obtuse. Stop it.

 

They're one in the same. Although UPS typically means a lot better quality.

 

that depends on what brand you get.

 

I think it is stupid to buy a UPS for a laptop just because you want to partially slow down the battery's degradation. Besides, if you want to take the laptop with you to go take a dump or whatever, or if the power cord comes out, you are covered. And what does saving a little more battery get you if you aren't even using the battery anyway?

 

How am I being obtuse? Most consumer UPS, line regulators, and surge protectors provide very minimal protection. They're cheap for a reason. A UPS is really nothing more than a glorified combination of the latter two plus a laptop battery. Consumer products typically don't even have great sinusoidal power output.

As long as you get a decent product, all of the above will be able to deal with small power surges, while the former two will smooth out noise a little, and the first product just adds power to equipment during line sags or a blackout. My building has a line regulator and I have a small surge protector between the wall outlet and my power supply. So all I've chosen to do use my battery and voila, a DIY UPS.

 

That's speculation. I don't believe that at all. Then again I don't understand why most surge protectors offer like a $25,000 lifetime warranty, if any of your equipment is damaged becaus of a surge, if they're so cheap.
But like you, a laptop battery and a decent surge protector is all one really needs.

 

Okay let's get started on the UPS/Surge protector incident.

A UPS is basically a surge protector+a back up battery. This is used mostly for when power loss could cause major issues with downtime.

sgogeta4 is not explaining himself very well by saying surge protectors/UPS offer minimal protection. That's like saying "Seat belts, offer minimal protection*"
* When your getting shot at..
* When a ICBM is heading to your city
* When your in an accident with a 18 wheeler front end on your little smart car...
.... You get the point..

The truth is UPS/Surge protectors offer excellent protection for the most common problems in electricity: Minimal surges (I forget the voltage (or joules), Spikes (caused by high power appliances), brownouts (low voltage, typically followed by a surge can be dangerous but typically not), lighting induced surges (Only when ground wiring is surged by a lightning strike on the ground (lighting leaks into the ground wiring) and several other reasons.

What they don't offer protection is:
* Direct lightning strikes to your home. The sheer voltage of the lightning strike would surpass the surge protector's or UPS' ground capacity and will more then likely reduce your electronics to waste.
* Other extreme surges/spikes (could be caused by a generator failing, hard...).
For just about everything else electric, your covered.

WARNING
* DO not trust manufacturers putting a $25,000 lifetime warranty on their surge protectors. It's just bull.. I've read 3 companies warranties. Where it states what is not covered: ALL of them list the ONLY reasons where a surge protector would not work as covered by warranty (and typically what you think you'd be protected for):
water damage (obvious)
Lightning strikes
Acts of god <-- covers anything having to do with natural disasters
Short circuits
Drops/falls
Overloading the surge protector, or your wall socket's breaker.
List goes on.....

 

For about 2 years I take my battery out and use it only when going out.
It was still working great and like new when I decided to plug it in all the time couple months ago,
and I found the battery's dead few days ago Totally unusable anymore. I'm really pissed off.

 

u have be very unlucky mate

 

These kind of articles only breed paranoia. I used to try to "outsmart" my gadgets, but in the end, as a user you have little control. For the most part, some of the brightest individuals in their respective areas designed the batteries and controller for the battery charging to best meet the needs of the laptop and its use.

Just use your laptop.

Of course heed advice like not leaving your laptop in a hot or freezing cold car a lot or for extended periods. But otherwise, best you'll do is eek some extra time out of your battery for a little longer, but a dead battery is inevitable. An hour of battery life after two years from a heavily used battery or an hour and ten minutes from one that a person stressed out over storage and capacity levels and such for the last two years is not worth it.

 

In my case, Is a dead battery after couple of months plugged in all the time inside the laptop worth it? Hell no.
It still can give me 2.5 Hours before I plug it in.

 

I've had my battery plugged in my sager for over a year and have probably used it on battery oh, maybe 20 hours tops. It only has 3% battery wear, and can get ~ 2 hours of use out of it, which is pretty darn good considering it has a Core 2 Quad and GTX 260m. I used it just recently on battery and got almost 2 hours before it gave me low battery warning and I shut down and recharged.

My Vostro 1500 was plugged in 95% of the time too, and after three years has only ~25% wear.

Not sure where you're getting that a battery will be dead after a couple months plugged in? There surely is an issue with your battery or laptop if that's the case.

 

I'm not saying all batteries / all laptops, I just wished mine didn't die on me.
Now I wished I hadn't plug it all the time

 

That's unfortunate. Something is definitely wrong there. You shouldn't have to worry about it.

 

Did you try calibrating it before you plugged it in? It may have actually already lost all that capacity and you just never noticed. It may also be that even if you had continued keeping it out all the time and only used it when going out, it would still be dead now. That's a big part of the problem with these things; it's often hard to tell exactly what caused the problem unless you have someone with the same model with almost exactly the same usage pattern, except for the one little thing you want to check.

 

like I said, it still gave me good 2.5 hours before I left it plugged in.

The battery still got charged a few cycles when I left it inside,
I could tell because it started charging from 97% after a while

So I believe the battery was healthy, my notebook is healthy. that's why I'm pissed off.

 

It still might be an isolated case, as I've left my battery in at 100% charge for the past 3 yrs in my notebook and still have 90+% battery charge (<10% wear).

 

new battery on the way so knock on wood.

I never have good experiences with batteries,
my last notebook (Thinkpad T22) = I left it plugged in all the time and the capacity went from 2 hrs to ~15-30 minutes
I don't know if it's a Li-Ion or not, I was still newbie

 

Exactly, but I would at least do a full discharge every 6 months or so just to recalibrate.

 

If I were to have the same good experience I would say the same.
But how a good working battery that give 2.5 hours (so the battery still good right?) dies suddenly .. that doesn't make sense

 

It could just be an age thing. Kind of like how some HP inkjet cartridges won't work, even if they still have ink, if they're past their "expiration date". That was kind of the point of my second possibility, that even if you hadn't left it plugged in all the time, because it'd just passed that "certain age", it would have deteriorated regardless. The problem we have is that with all the variation in manufacturers and everything else, it's really difficult for us to pin down exactly what goes wrong sometimes. Heck, maybe you even got a really good battery, in that every other battery from your generation, no matter how well kept, died within a year! That's the whole thing, it's really difficult to tell.