Y500 Battery, In or Out?

I am currently running the laptop with the battery removed. The battery was charged to 60% before it was removed, figure that's the optimal charge for storage. Are they any negative effects of doing this?

 

Nope. If you plan to store the battery long-term leaving it partially charged is exactly what you should be doing for optimal battery health.

I personally keep the battery in all of the time because I use the laptop as a mobile device for school and such, not as an always plugged-in desktop replacement that never moves from the table. Even if you never move it, I don't think there's any harm keeping the battery attached and fully charged all the time. Discharge cycles are what increase wear and shorten battery lifespan. Plus it's nice having the battery acting as a UPS in case the power goes out if you don't have a real UPS. I've lost unsaved work in the past when my battery-less laptop shut off during a power outage so I know better now.

 

No negative effects. But I think you're going a bit too extreme.

The convenience of just having a battery in the laptop all the time outweighs whatever marginal battery-life improvements you're hoping to achieve by keeping it removed.

 

There is a tool in the tray for controlling battery lifespan/ processor power- It is either a bike, car, or train and there you can adjust for long lifespan or fully charge or something like that. I usually have it high performance (train) and on max lifespan. A few hours before I need to be wire-free I switch to full charge mode and switch back when i get home again- seems to work really well. just my two cents...

 

I always leave the battery out no point having it plugged in if i am not mobile..

 

Yup, the issue with Lenovo Energy Management program is that it loses your settings once in a while. So, when I restart the computer, it will reset to "Maximum Battery Life" and start charging the battery past 60%. Which is irritating because if I set it back down to "Optimized Battery Health", I'll have to wait till it discharges back down to 60% before I can start playing games. That is because while the battery is discharging, the gpu's are locked at 135mhz. Anyway, I'm over it, I currently have it plugged in and let it stay at full charge. This is the most half assed laptop I've ever purchased. Part of the fault goes to Lenovo and most of it goes to Microsoft with Windows 8. Nothing works perfectly, it kinda works and kinda doesn't. Lenovo, you piece of sh!t.

 

Nice 3DMark11 score!