A Couple of Important Questions

right i have a couple of questions

1, is it safe to leave the laptop plugged into the AC all the time (unless im delibratly wasting the battery)

2, with TuneUp Uilties 2008 is it possible to make it do a complete check while the computer is switched off but still plugged into the AC

3, how can i make it so that my data is backed up say every wednesday

3a, would the computer have to be on to do that

3b, could it be switched off but plugged into the AC and still do it

 

1, yes, but for battery sake,you might want to remove battery (not sure on this)

2' has to be turned on

3, most external hard drives come with backup software. just syncronise it every wednesday ^_^

 

what do you mean remove battery, aint that needed? i mean not have it on all the time just plugged in

okay thanx, thats kinda annoying

it would be a internal HD, where can i get the software?

is it posisble to make so that it overwrites the previous backup?

 

on the note about the battery, i heard that keeping it at full or completely empty for long periods of times (like 2 months) is not good for it. thats why i meantioned that.

if its internal, I reccomend making a partition on the hard drive for backup. as for overwriting the previous backup, i dont know, i have been actually been doing it manyally (just been doing a copy and paste on everything) Perhaps someone else can help you more on that matter.

 

i heard that aswell, i heard its best to let the battery run down to 0% atleast once a month.

would i be able to make it so that it backups the data on to the HD with the OS on it? so i have it that 120GB HD is just for the OS and backup and the put all the programs and everything onto the second HD? would that leave a lot of wasted space on the 120GB do you think?

 

With respect to the battery, I don't believe it's still a good idea to run the battery all the way down any more, at least as discussed in this Wikipedia article on Li-Ion Batteries. According to the article, if a li-ion battery is discharged too far down, it can actually suffer irreversible damage.

The reason for doing a regular full discharge applied to the older form of Ni-Cad batteries, which, as described in this Wikipedia article on the "Memory Effect" suffer from a condition known as, surprise, surprise, the "memory effect" under which the battery will slowly condition itself to a state where it holds less and less useable charge if it's not routinely discharged fully.

So, be careful with your discharges, folks!

 

dam i didnt know that, i wont be doing that anymore

 

you are supposed to fully discharge the battery approx once every 30 cycles in order to keep the battery meter properly synchronised

 

Indeed, as the folks at the Battery University state in Part Two of their battery guidelines; although to be completely fair, what they suggest is that you run the device the battery powers until the device shuts itself off - which is the safest course because then the battery isn't so discharged that it goes into so-called "deep discharge" which can, in fact, damage the battery.

However, that's done solely to keep the "fuel gauge" properly calibrated so that you get a reasonably true reading of how much charge is left in the battery - it's not done to condition the battery itself.

 

thanks for the input shyster, will help me in the future.

 

No worries. Have fun!

 

FYI...Microsoft has a cool little tool for syncing files and folders. It can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E0FC1154-C975-4814-9649-CCE41AF06EB7&displaylang=en