Extend Battery Life

Hi Guys,

I'm not sure if this is exactly the right place for this question, but you guys have been very helpful with all my questions so far, so i thought i'd try you all on this one:

I have my laptop on for long periods of time, 24 / 48 hours an longer sometimes. In these credit crunch times, is there anyway (or any product available where) i can enable my laptop to only take power from the mains when the battery has only 5% (or so) battery life left. Then once it has reached a full charge, stop taking power from the mains and rely on the battery only until there is 5% power left?

Hope that all makes sense.

Thanks in advance for looking

 

how will tha save power? exactly....

silly idea just set your laptop to a power saver or some thing

unless im missing some thing

 

From what I can tell, he wants his laptop connected to his power brick all the time, but not charge until it's only 5% remaining, in other words, he doesn't want it to charge the other 95% of of the time.


As far as I know, it's impossible, and also impractical. Why not just use the laptop, plugged in, but without the battery inside?

 

i think hes trying to save money on electricity.

the only thing i can think of is just using the laptop without it being plugged and wehn it gets to 5% plug it in

 

That won;t save money on electricity though, as the laptop is still using the same amount of power from the battery when not charging, which has to be replaced when it is plugged in, so when plugged in and charging it would take twice as much power than when plugged in and not charging.

Also it would kill your battery.

 

Surely the laptop is only draining the power it needs to from the mains, and so although you would save power when its just on the battery when it starts charging again it will be drawing more power to replace that which was lost.....therefore you gain nothing. As said the best thing you could do is just run in power saving mode.

Correct me if i'm wrong but i believe this is how it works!

Lol me and theriko are obviously thinking the same thing... and he beat me!!!

 

Discharging it wouldnt kill your battery. Keeping it plugged in without discharging it would. I may be reading your post totally wrong but it sounds as if you meant that discharging it would be bad.

 

Each battery has a limited number of charging cycles in it, so continually discharging/recharging it will shorten its lifespan, but as you mentioned, so can leaving it plugged in with the battery inserted. The best plan if you want to keep the battery good for years to come is to run it on ac with the battery removed. I however like the safety of the ups that having the battery in provides and am not too worried about the longevity of the battery.

 

Well, there are less charging cycles used when running on battery power instead of leaving both plugged in. I agree, if you are going to use it on ac then take out the battery, but if you have to have the battery in while you have the ac adapter plugged in, take it out once it reaches 100%. Instead of recharging every time it hits 99% (and thus using your charge cycle at that point) just let it run down to 5% or so.