prolong battery life (for those who don't want to remove the battery)

Hi all,

I've got a question about the best practise to prolong the battery life of a home laptop. After reading this post http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=91846 I have a few questions:

The laptop is switched on pretty much from 7am to 9pm all day (mostly on the charger), and put into 'sleep' at night (and taken off the charger).

Some impressions from the original post:
* having it on the charger isn't great.
* best to get it down to 10%-20% then charge it
* calibrate your battery’s fuel gauge by doing a full discharge every 30 cycles.

I really can't be bothered pulling the battery out and keeping it cool. How is this for a policy:
* use the laptop unplugged until 20%
* then put it on the charger til 100%
* return to working unplugged.

Casual observation: if this IS the best policy - wouldn't it be great if the laptop could do it automatically (or do the manufacturers want us killing our batteries)?

Cheers all,
russ.au

 

Power manager has an enhanced battery life setting. I haven't watched to see what it does, but maybe it is something like you are suggesting.

 

Why would you wear out the battery like that if you have AC available? The best way to prolong the lifespan of your battery is to keep it partially charged (for example only up to 60%) and at cool temperatures. Every time you use the battery you wear it out slowly.

Of course that doesn't mean you should never use the battery in fear of it wearing out, because it will slowly lose it's capacity no matter what you do (even if you don't use it). Just use the battery when convenient, and if you want to slow down capacity loss, set the battery app to charge it to 60 or 80% max, or if you're really worried, remove it and store in a cool place at 60%.

 

So basically set your thresholds. You can discharge it to say 70% or something and just not have it start charging unless it was under 60%. My thresholds are start charging at 60%...end charging at 95%. I am mostly on AC power except when in class.

 

Just set your Charge Thresholds (Advanced tab of power manager, Battery Maintenance).

Decide on the minimum amount of battery life you need on a moments notice (e.g. 50%), and set this as your baseline. Set the maximum somewhere between 80% and 100% (I use 95%).

This strikes a good balance and is very easy to do on ThinkPads.

The reason this isn't automatic is that Lenovo has received more than a few calls, and I've answered several posts, from people concerned that their laptop wasn't charging when they plugged it in with a 97% full battery. The default setting is start at 95%, stop at 100%. If Lenovo made the default start at 60%, they would probably be flooded with complaints from confused customers.

 

Thanks for your help - this sounds perfect!

My Lenovo t61 is a clean build from the Clean Install Guide. So I don't have the "Power Manager" installed.

I've followed the driver matrix to this page: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-70601 - but there's nothing to download?

 

Go back in a bit, it'll be there.

 

The laptop goes off the power every night and put into suspend - is that bad for the battery?

I guess it would deplete the battery down, and the "Power Manager" wouldn't kick in until e.g. 50%.

 

It's not really bad, but suspend will draw a small amount of power (usually <1 watt). As a result, if you plan on leaving not using it for a long time (e.g. >6 hours), hibernate may be a better choice as it preserves battery power.