Battery Wear Levels

I know this is more a general question than an HP Envy question but I will ask here cause that is what I own. I just got a 1st Gen Envy 15 (In Canada) on clearance at bestbuy and it came with the slice battery as well and I am very happy it did cause the 6 cell life sucks. LOL

So anyways i ran my batties both down till the PC shutoff and charged it back up again.

Once charged the battery levels were down 3% on the main and 5.5% on the Slice. Not too happy bout that.

I read on here that you should not take your batteries down past 40% so i tried that last night and charged the batteries back up and the main actually came back up 1% and the slice came back 2.5% so now my main has lost 2% and the slice 3%.

Is this normal to fluctuate like this? I thought once the battery wear level was decreased that it would remain that way or get worse and not better.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Thanks

 

Batterybar's battery wear numbers aren't perfectly accurate, I wouldn't care about them too much if I were you.

 

You will only find out the true battery wear level after a calibration of the battery, unless your bios has an dedicated calibrate function, if not just boot into the bios and leave the notebook till it shuts down when the battery runs out then charge it back up, you will then see the true wear level of the battery, also you battery runtime estimate will be more accurate.

But doing a battery calibrate is not good for an battery, so it should not be done very often, maybe every 3-4 months is enough.

 

not to mention batteries in general have 2-5% wear from the factory.

just ignore it.

It's not something to obsess over really unless you're only getting like 2 hours of battery life while idling/browsing the web (and not doing flash intensive web browsing)

 

Just if you are running on battery and it`s getting low, and you need to get that last bit of life out of it and the battery remaining percentage is wrong , and your notebook dies when it says you have 10% remaining, you could loose data or damage the hard drive.

 

Is that true you aren't supposed to go below 40% on the battery? That doesn't sound right....

 

I'm not sure where you picked that up, but it's incorrect. You can take the battery down passed 40% anytime you need to without ill effect.

There was a memory effect with older battery technologies that could cause battery issues, but even that does not quite fit the advice you mention.

 

Correct; old NiCad batteries had issues with memory; you needed to discharge the cells almost completely before charging to prevent (or fix) it. Lithium batteries do not suffer memory problems; conversely, it is not healthy to regularly take them down to cut-off levels. Its better to maintain a charge.

I believe the 40% rule you heard is for long term storage of the Lithium based batteries -- best to have 40% charge for extended storage.

 

How true is it if you leave the charger plugged into the laptop that the battery life considerably gets much shorter?

 

Very true.
Full charge is always maintained with the power cord, which is higher than the battery naturally wants, which in turn creates constant heat.

However, what do you want? The battery to outlast the notebook's lifespan?
With running the battery, you get two benefits:
1. A built in UPS (self explanatory)
2. A power conditioner -- power goes into the battery, which in turn goes to the notebook components. The battery will naturally smooth out any voltage spikes or variances that occur naturally in residential power. This will protect the more expensive components inside.

My $0.02 is to use your battery as most convenient. Once the battery starts degrading, buy a new one. Keep the old one installed when you primarily use it on AC power. If you know you will be out/about, put your better battery in.

 

I have 2.5 % battery wear but I am only getting 3 hours of battery life whereas I should be geting 4+ looking at the posts in the other batter log thread.

I have an i5, I use granola to slow down my cpu, not many apps are running, integrated graphics...etc. I've tried SO many things but its barely hitting 3 hours...

so.

1) Any tips?

2) Do they send you a replacement batter if you just ask them?

 

1) do a clean install - my i5-580m went from 3 hrs to 4-4.5hrs with normal use on integrated gfx

2) yes, but 2.5% is nothing to worry about a) it's not accurate, tomorrow u'll probably find that is 4.1% or 0.0%, b) even if it was 2.5%, it translates to about 10 minutes of battery life, not to mention that u'll get that battery wear in a month or so of use.