Power Manager

Can some of you more knowledgeable ThinkPad users provide some information on the Power Manager. I've read that Lenovo provides special batteries with chips in them. When the notebook is plugged into AC the chips in the battery tells the notebook to only use power from the AC not the battery. Virtually eliminating detrimental effects on the battery, is this true?

I would love to be plugged in all the time, I don't because I want to conserve my battery. I only charge at 10-20% all the way to 100% and then restart the process all over again.

 

This is true for all new batteries. They all have circuitry in them that do what you suggest. What kills batteries however is heat. Leaving them in the laptop powered by AC, therefore not much power management since people rather "High Performance" since that'll make it faster Even though it's not say so hot, its' generally much warmer than room temperature (85F is cool for a laptop but still hotter than room temp).

Lenovo Power Manager however does allow some pretty spiffy stuff. You can control the charge state of the battery by not allowing it to charge unless it's below a certain level which will limit cycles on the battery. Even well kept battery can just die after a certain amount of cycles. Granted it's usually 300-500 but some die right around 300. For the average user that can be in less than 1yr (with a crappy battery also).

 

Time also wears batteries even if you don't use them. The only thing I hear constantly is to never completely drain the battery to 0%. But you're not doing that....

 

What kills batteries is having a high state of charge all the time. A battery at 40% over time will see less degradation to its maximum capacity than a battery at 100%. Batteries die in one year because people keep them plugged into their computers at 100% charge -- unfortunately, it's the most common usage case.