What is the best way to increase my battery's life time ??

Hi,

I just bought a T61P and I want to know what is the best way to keep my battery (6 cell Li-ion) working great for a long time. Some of my friends have laptops and they're they recharge the battery every time they use it. For example, they use 10% of the battery and replug the laptop for 3 days with the battery installed. I always thought that he was better to fully use a battery before recharging it... Is it also true for laptop's battery ? Should I remove the battery when I let my laptop plugged for a long time ?? Do you have any others tips to help me keep my battery working great ??

THX

 

Since you have a TP, take advantage of the ThinkVantage Power Manager and set the charging threshold to keep your battery charged at 40% instead of fully 100% all the time. Just charge it at 100% when you know the next day you'll be using it on the road.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion#Storage_temperature_and_charge

And no, Li-On batteries don't like to be fully discharged often.

 

So it would be better to recharge it at 40%, use it all and recharge it back to 40% ??

 

i uninstalled the powermanager.
do most thinkpad owners keep it?

and what about removing the battery when plugged in?

 

No no, what I meant was don't charge it over 40% if you know you'll be using AC power for a long time. For example, you can set the charging threshold 36/40, which means start charging at 36% and stop at 40%.

Also, this is a good guide to read:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=91846

 

Here's my new settings in ThinkVantage Battery Maintenance :

Start charging when below: 36%
Stop charging at: 40%

It's okay right ??

 

Hey thank you for you help

 

lol you did? I think that's one of the best things TP has to offer.

Yeah you can unplug it too, but since you've a TP, the ThinkVantage PM is really useful in the case that you don't like to unplug the battery. For non-TP laptops, I unplugged them all the time when I know I'll be on AC for a while.

Another thing to keep in mind is, what actually bad for the battery is the heat from the laptop itself.

 

Avoid very deep discharges that go all the way and avoid excess heat as already mentioned.

 

does anyone ever use the "Optimize for battery lifespan (automatically change for me)" setting?

edit: i was also messing with some power options... is the battery life affected significantly if you set maximum cpu speed to "adaptive" ?

 

CPU speed significantly affects your battery life. Setting it to adaptive while on battery is good, and low/lowest is even better. Since it's it's a Core 2 Duo, at lowest speed it should still be enough for whatever you're doing on the road.

 

I've used Optimize for awhile. So far it's never been any different than Full Charge, so I don't recommend it. Manually setting your charge thresholds is the way to go.

 

do you set your thresholds the same way stewiegriffin does?

 

According to the NBR Battery Guide, mentioned earlier, storing the battery at approximately 40% is ideal.

Break down of the Power Manager thresholds:

Always fully charged (start when below 96%; stop at 100%): Self explanatory. Select this setting to always be charging your battery on AC mode. I don't recommend this.

Optimize for battery lifespan (automatically change for me): I still do not understand this setting. I have set it for a month and it is identical to the Always fully charged option. It has never notified me when thresholds changed either. I do not recommend this setting.

Custom: This is where I have mine set and I recommend this. Following the Battery Guide, I set my battery to Start charging when below 36% and to Stop charging at 40%. The battery may not always follow this rule though. Due to a bug in the software, the only work around I know of is to always set your Custom settings while on battery and then plug your AC in.

Here are some example situations with these settings.

Your battery is at 50%. With start 36% and stop 40%, your battery charge will stay at 50% when plugged in.

Your battery is at 20%. Once plugged in, your battery will charge until 40% and stop.

Perform Reset...: This will perform a battery reset; which means to fully drain the battery and recharge it back to 100%. This will provide more accuracy in battery readings. Perform this about every 30 charge cycles.

----------

After ten months with this Custom setting and after 130 cycles, I have a Full charge capacity of 68.88Wh on my 7-cell. This is approximately 3.5 hrs with Wireless on and low brightness. I have the 140M dedicated graphics adapter.

 

wow. i wish i had known about this when i first got it. i've had it for about 3-4 weeks now, where it charged to 100% all the time.
have i already shortened battery life?

 

Thank you Arkit3kt Very nice guide for Lenovo Users

 

I doubt it. Most people do that anyways. I didn't discover all this for about 2-3 weeks, so don't fret too much about it. Besides, the whole battery maintenance thing is kind of OCD.

Thanks. I think all Lenovo/ThinkPad users should know about the Power Manager. It's a really handy software. It's good to have something like this that no other notebook has.

 

It's the best thinkvantage software with access connections being second. The other thinkvantage stuff is not really useful imo though.

 

really?

why is access connections so good?
i was wrong about powermanager, so sell me on accessconnections too.

 

Each ThinkVantage program's useablity depends on the user. If you travel a lot and make various wireless connections from place to place, Access Connections would be good for you because it allows you to create separate profiles with different configurations for each "hot spot" you visit. Of course that's only one of the features. You really have to use the program to see if it would help you.