New CF 29 Battery

I have just purchased a new battery for my CF 29 and haven't received it yet, but I would like to hear any advice on how to get the most out of it from the start. Do I just fully charge it and full steam ahead or should I charge/discharge it through several cycles first. Any advice is appreciated!
Mark

 

Hey Mark, This is the For Sale section. Your best chance of getting a helpful response is in the Panasonic General section.

 

Agreed... Done!

I would recalibrate it a few times when you first get it and then try to use it only on battery for a few cycles until the laptop wants to shut off.

As pointed out in a post around here somewhere... IF you plan on running this mainly on an AC adapter, you should set your Temp setting in the BIOS to 80%....

Others will chime in I am sure...

 

The first charge with a brand new battery is the most important. You should charge it for 24 hours straight and then do a full discharge. After that use as normal and complete discharges are not desirable.

 

I don't see the point of charging a li ion batterty for 24hours straight, li ion batteries do not have the memory effect.

Also high temperatures do tend to make the battery loose it's capacity over time.
Usually calibrating and recharging is more then enough.

 

Even the latest cell phones with Lithium Ion Batteries say that you should charge several hours past the "full" point... (IE 24 hours) This establishes the main pints in the battery I presume. Just like if you keep recharging your Li-Ion battery when it gets to the 80% mark.... It WILL fail sooner than if you were to charge and discharge to completely or do a battery recalibration.

 

Can anyone explain why Panasonic runs the media bay battery down to 0% before switching to the main battery? I know that's supposed to be terrible for the battery.

Glen

 

Thanks for moving my post....I realized it was in the for sale section and I couldn't figure out how to move it! Thanks for the good advice also!

 

Glen,


That's a great question... But I think they run them down to 3% and then it shows 0.. But I am not 100% sure on that.

 

Just wanted to add this for anyone interested to read about li ion batteries

It will also answer your question glenn

Lithium-ion battery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Well over the years maintaining hundreds of Motorola handhelds I have followed this advice given to me by Motorola and had good results. They know a little bit about batteries I think...

The man asked for advice, and that is mine.

If you don't think that you should waste the time making the initial charge for a full 24 hours on your batteries, don't.

 

AltoProxima -

I've read the entire article; it does not say anything that negates the suggestion that a long-duration initial charge is a good idea. Furthermore, many manufacturers of consumer electronics do in fact recommend an extended trickle charge rather than a fast charge for the first few cycles to maximize battery capacity and overall life.

As Azrial has stated; if you do not see fit to do so, then don't. But "memory effect" has very little to do with initial charge...

mnem
Get along, little ions...

 

I think the important thing initially is to make sure the monitoring chips in the battery get calibrated correctly the first time, as this is the baseline used from then on to control the charging and discharging. I had a brand new IBM battery once and was doing the initial full charge-full discharge cycle and someone turned it off during it's first discharge. it never gave me more than 30% from that day on.
I would be inclined to charge for 24 hours, then do a battery calibration cycle, use the battery a couple of times, then change the bios to "high temperature".

Just my 2c

Fraser

 

Yup!
That's what I'd do.....

 

Hey I thought I would chime in here. I used to engineer Motorola handheld commercial products. I am familiar with what the chargers were actually doing and some of the battery testing. The long initial charge recommendation dates to the NiCD and NiMH batteries. It doesn't apply to Li-Ion batteries.

You should allow the batteries to fully charge the first time you use them. However, you don't need to leave them plugged in after the computer says the battery is fully charged. The reason is the computer at that point is no longer charging the battery. To understand this it helps to understand how Li-ion batteries are charged.

Li-ion batteries have a two part charge process. They are initially charged with a constant current. That current is expressed as a fraction of the battery capacity in amp-hours. So if the battery is a 3 amp-hour batter (ie it can put out 3 amps for 1 hour) a 1/2 C rate is 1.5 amps. A 2-way radio might be charged at 1C. Because of power supply limits most laptops will be charged at something more like 1/3 C. The cells in the battery can not exceed a certain voltage. Typically that is 4.2 volts per cell. So if you have a 9 cell battery you have 3 cells in series you get a nominal voltage of 10.8V and a peak charge voltage of 12.6V. That peak voltage is a never exceed voltage. If the cells go up to 4.3 volts safety circuits in the battery cut off the charger.

So once the battery cells get to 4.2V each the battery still isn't fully charged. This is at about 80% charge and with the 1C charge rates typical in 2 way radios using Li-ion batteries and cellphones this would take about 1 hour. This is also why you commonly hear marketers talk about a 3 hour charge time but a "quick charge" to 80% in one hour. After reaching 4.2V/cell the charger basically reduces current such that the voltage stays at 4.2V. So over the next 2 hours or so the current going into the battery will taper off. Once the current gets down to some arbitrarily low level (say 1/20 C ) the charger will simply turn off. After that your computer is no longer doing anything with the battery. No current is going in and the charging cycle is in fact complete.

So with that in mind there is no reason to overnight charge the battery before you use it the first time so long as we are talking about Li-Ion batteries. This does not apply to NiCD and NiMH which have their own peculiarities.