Charging the Battery for the First Time, What's the Right Way?

this is the first laptop I've have ever owned, and i recall reading that the first time you charge the battery youre supposed to do it a certain way, to a certain percent, then let it discharge or something like that. anyone know what im talking about?

also I'll be installing vista first thing, will that screw up charging it correctly the first time since you cant really stop in the middle of installing it?

 

You can plug it in and do all your installing without the battery even being inside the laptop.

From what I've been told you let it drain and then charge it all the way up to 100 and then let it drain again.

 

This is what I would do, don't install battery yet. And install Vista with power adapter. After you installed Vista, shut down your laptop, put in battery, turn on your computer and start running vista. Then wait for 5 to 8 hours with your vista running and power adapter plugged in. This should calibrate you battery well...

Alternative way, don't start your vista, and wait until your battery to fully charge itself, then start your vista, and don't use powe adapter. And drain your battery completely to 0% until your system forced to shut down.

 

Don't forget to write a reveiw of your new laptop! And post a lot pictures and videos!

 

I never did mine the correct way I guess...is that why I get only 30min maybe....oh well...

 

Can anyone tell us and be sure about their information? I am curious as well.

 

maybe, also could be because you always charge your battery to full, I believe somone post an article that if you charge your battery to 80% all the time, you can get 40% more battery life.

 

Ha, never mind your quad-core desktop processor and 8800mGTX SLI

 

Anyone have reliable info? Maybe a link?

 

Hi Vestibule and Team,

Look at my Post #305 ....

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=278483&page=31

Hope that helps!

G!

 

Thank you gonwk (funny cat)! Does that mean I should keep the battery inside of my refrigerator, it would last longer?

 

Rep'd you Gonwk. WOW I really learned a lot from going through all those pages and have read EVERY word. Thank you so much this made my day.

 

Thanks guys!

G!

 

Anyone know why you shouldn't leave your lithium battery fully charged? I heard this can damage the battery and shorten it's lifetime if you leave it in a fully charged state in storage for a long time.

 

gonwk good post looks like many have not seen before. I could not rep you as said spread around.

The new one for me is Panisonic. gonwk I have issues with it. It says nothing. Let me explain. Li-Ion batts have a finite number of charge cycles. Now if I run my batt down to zero and fully charge that is one cycle. I think notebook batts are rated at 300-500 cycles. Now if I ran it down to zero and charged to 50% would I loose a full cycle? No not on Li-Ion, 2 50% charges equals 1 100% charge.

Now the Panisonic sites graph talks about total number of charges 100% vs 80% And guess what the 80% can do more? Go figure? It should graph run time hours would be a very different graph and not as favorable to the 80%.

If I have 300 cycles and I only charge to 80% I would expect to get 360 but the runtime would be the same. 300@100%=360@80% as far as runtime goes. Also running to zero and charging to 80% is the same as charging to 100% and running down to 20%. Consider that? And running down to 20% and charging to 80% will allow more charges. But in the end no gain? It is playing with numbers nothing more.

Heat is the enemy of the Li-Ion. Long term storage month+ 40% charge and the fridge not a bad idea. But some of us use our notebooks and not an option so keep that in mind. Much of this info is impractical for the real world user.

First charges when battery is new is not critical. Periodic full charge then discharge is recommended to keep the cells from "sticking/freezing". Much misunderstanding comes from characteristics of other types of batts example Ni-Cad.

 

you are right, it is very hard to estimate or to test how well battery perform. This is due to its chemical and physical properties.

The rate of chemical reaction is directly proportional to temperature. Thus as temperature increase the rate of reaction increases, thus reducing battery life.

It is hard to say one chemical reaction is one cycle, since the reaction is none stopping. I think the estimate of 300 cycles was for easiness of coming up with a experimental result for comparison purposes, the experimental method was to completely charge and drain the battery's electric potential, and measure how many cycles of this process can be tolerated by the battery without losing a pre-determined value of its charging capacity.

The reason that 80% charging is good was because it take a significant more effort to charge as the battery approaches 100%, it was due to that the electrons will be pumped against a greater gradient, thus reducing the chemical properties of the battery.

Ignore what I have said above since it is purely speculation, based on basic knowledge of circuits and chemical kinetics.

 

Heh, I remember when I bought my first (and only so far but about to change this week) notebook, a Compaq Presario 2816ea, I turned it on, plugged in and with the battery, and immediately Windows installation began. Which found me in a difficult spot cause I had to leave in a couple of min for a basketball game. So, I closed the lid thinking that it will continue installing Windows...I never heard anything about taking care of charging the battery "properly" and all that. All went, relatively fine with the battery life...kind of. After a bit over a year, mid 2003, the battery life was down to about half an hour without changing power/performance settings. It was a 1.4Ghz Pentium 4m with 512MB RAM and 64MB dedicated Radeon 7500m. It was a beast back in 2002. I remember playing Soldier of Fortune 2 full details etc. Eh, wait, oh yes, but half an hour was definitely too low even for it. After another year the battery life was more or less a joke, 15-20 min. 2005, the battery life was the same as if it had no battery in it...and rarely I had to remove the battery or else the system would not run. All those years it was always inside the notebook. In fact, it still is from summer 2006 till September while in storage in a warehouse.
My point...batteries die no matter what, if you are careless like I was or not. Unless you buy a 300 euro notebook, you shouldn't have a problem purchasing a new batter after a year or two if battery life is that important to you, and just stop worrying about it. If you take care of it and it lasts 3-4 years, there is a good chance you won't be using the notebook by then anyway.

 

My hp battery from four years ago still runs for like 40 minutes, and I have it on my laptop all the time, never removed it, and use it with power adapter. Though I don't need to buy a battery replacement, since I am getting my NP8660 sometimes in next two weeks!

 

OK ... I am with all you guys ... Just plug into the wall and let run... and don't sweat the little things ...

The new laptops ... like Compals come with a little neat program that asks you "Power User" or "Economy" or something like that ... you can shoose that and let it run...

But when you talk to "experts" .. they tell you exactly what PowerPack or BlueMak or Youdontneed just said ... just plug it in and run it MAX power ...

If it will psychologically make you feel better then unplug from A/C when you go and leave the laptop in Hibernate ...

Now that I have confused us all ... time for a Lunch Break!

G!