T61 and battery usage (cycle count)

Ok, so a few months ago I bought a T61. Great machine. I got the discrete graphics so it goes through the battery pretty fast when I actually unplug it and use it on battery.

I've read all kinds of things about people changing the charging threshholds and removing the battery when its plugged in, but since my thinkpads have always been pretty good on batteries i've never worried about it much.

Now, i'm looking at my battery properties, and I have 93 cycles on this battery. I have not had this machine for 90 days! I have run the battery for a full cycle probably 3 times. I keep it plugged in most of the time, and have never messed with when or how it charges.

How could it possibly have done 90 cycles by now? I had T23 batteries for years and never got far over 50 cycles on them using them exactly how I use this machine.

How exactly are cycles counted on these machines. On my old ones it always seemed to be, if you used the battery down to 80% five times, that basically counted as a cycle since you used the whole capacity (or somewhat close to that). So are the cycles figured differently on the newer machines? There is no way I have gone through 90+ cycles unless it counts every time the battery goes below 100% and it charges it back up, and most of those would still have to have happened while it was plugged in the whole time.

BTW, I am using the 90W power adapter that it came with for all charging.

 

How/ where did you find the cycle count?

When I right click my battery icon I can't find any of that info...
Thanks for the help and sorry this doesnt directly answer your question

 

Right click on the battery icon in the system tray (not the big meter to the left of the system tray, that is the "power Manager Gauge") and pick battery information. It will bring up "power manager" and the info is on the bottom left of the window.

 

i have this machine since christmas and it's showing 72 cycles. but most of the time i plug the adapter in.

 

Ya, my usage is the same. Adapter plugged in most of the time, rarely actually uses battery, and I unplug it sometimes when the machine is off. I sure don't expect that to keep racking up the battery cycles.

 

I believe that a cycle counts EACH time that the battery is discharged and then recharged. They do not have to be a full 100-0-100 charge either. If you unplug your battery for an hour, it drops down to 85%, and then you top it back off to 100%, that is probably considered a cycle.

I use 60-95% charge thresholds on my x200. That means if I plug in my laptop when it is at 73%, it will run off AC, but the battery will remain idle and cool. This method also cuts down on my cycles considerably. You may not be able to use such a low threshold because your machine draws so much power. I can still get 5 hours even at 60% charge, so that is almost always enough. However, you may only get 2-3 hours at a 60% charge. Therefore a higher setting 80-100% may be necessary. The default settings are 96%-100%. I've put about 12 cycles on my machine in the 5 weeks that I have had it, and I use at least some time on battery every single day.

I could never get the thresholds to work properly on my old T40, and I ended up putting over 800 cycles, and thoroughly reducing battery life, on the orignal battery during the 5 years that I had it (naturally I bought some spares). However, the thresholds work great on my x200, and even work in XP and Ubuntu, despite only installing the power manager in Vista.

 

I have never used the thresholds before, but I will set them up now after seeing this. I am just amazed by this, because I am looking at my T42 right now, and its battery, which has been regularly switched out with another (probably about every 6 months I switch them), has been used since 2004 in much the same manner as my T61 battery, and it is currently showing 35 cycles.

Thats a huge difference, so they must have changed something about the way cycles are calculated.