Leaving a laptop plugged in

I have a Sager NP8130 and I was wondering if it is all right to leave it plugged in when it is already 100% charged. When the laptop reaches to 100% does it automatically use the power from the outlet?

 

There's a bit of debate about that, to be honest. What I do is that I remove the battery and keep it in a safe place, using only the outlet.

Mr. Mysterious

 

There is no debate about it. When the battery reaches 100% it will still cycle and trickle charge slowly and that is something you want to avoid. The 8130 doesn't have the intelligent charging that some higher end and business/enterprise notebooks have. Also, when it reaches 100% and sits in your laptop for a long time, it will heat up. Heat will cause degradation in battery capacity.

Discharge your battery to ~55% and take it out and store in a cool, dry place. Do your best to never discharge your battery more than 50%. Discharging a lithium ion past 50% is actually very bad for it. If possible, always charge it before it drops below that threshold.

 

I always keep my laptop plugged in even after the battery is charged, but I would love to hear more opinions on this

 

This is pretty bad for the battery unless it has intelligent charging like some Macbooks and Lenovos. That still allows the battery to heat up however.

There's another thread where people were asking for dummy batteries to put into the compartment.

If you know you are going to be sitting still somewhere and using your laptop for a few hours, always take out your battery if you are plugged in. The trickle charging at 100% causes wear. I've also noticed the battery heat up a lot if you leave it inside while plugged in for a long time.

I've had old laptops or dealt with client laptops where their users left their laptops plugged in 24/7. After a year, their battery wear was over 40% lower capacity than a fresh battery would charge to because of trickle charge and cycling and heat. Heat is one of the main culprits that people often don't recognize in causing battery wear.

 

As stated, the battery will continue to trickle charged when plugged in. If you don't need to use the battery, you're better off removing it. If you want to extend the life, charging up then unplugging to discharge helps. The real enemy to lithium batteries is heat, which is mainly generated when being charged and attached to the laptop/in use.

 

Basically what Electric said is on the money

 

If you're concerned about power outages while running your notebook without the battery, you could pick up an inexpensive UPS. I have the previous-generation version of this model that I picked up for $20 on Black Friday a couple years ago.

This way, if something happens, you'll have enough power to safely save your work and shut down the machine.

 

Malibal & Pman,

Some Sager laptops have one of the rubber footings attached. Is there a x7200 battery "blank?"

I believe the battery terminals for the x7200 are "grooved" otherwise I could use something like a flexible piece of plastic (or duct tape) to prevent the battery from connecting - keeping the battery pack in use as the "footing" for the laptop, but not have it connected and charging.

 

Unfortunately, I have not seen any "blank" batteries for that kind of usage, although that might not be a bad idea for certain models. I always remove my batteries once they are charged to help maintain their life, so I understand the concern. I definitely wouldn't use duct tape to prevent it from connecting since the heat from the laptop would likely cause some of the residue to be left behind.

 

Hiya,

I cant recall seeing any blanks either, Hmm will take some thought that one!

Pman

 

What an insight, guys! i've always left my notebook plugged in and never too the battery off. I thought this way it should degrade not more than 5% a year, but 40%, that's huge! May be that have to do with some old laptops, can't believe in 2011 you still can loose that much life from the battery. And what about people who use their laptops on the go every day, charging/discharging them completely every day... the same advice is applicable to them? it's kinda intense

Does all Macbooks use this intelligent charging thing?

 

People have asked for blanks or dummy batteries before in other threads.

You could get a piece of foam from any craft/hardware store and cut it to the right shape and stuff it into the hole. For me, I have a notebook cooling stand that carries the weight of the laptop without relying on the feet so the missing foot from the battery is no problem if I do take it out.

 

How cool should the cool, dry place be? Fridge cool?

 

I thought that when the battery is full and the computer is plugged in there is no more bothering the battery and the computer takes the power directly from the external power adaptor. My believe was that as long as there is no leakage there is no problem with the battery and it does not get used at all. If I was wrong I have to say that Clevo did a bad job, at lest with D901C and probably with the related past and later models, because removing the battery results also in removing one of the small legs and it requires a large screwdriver. If it would b true that there are small charges made, and the battery gets warm it would results also in an increase temperature of the hdd I have right on top of it and in general that hdd is the coolest out of all.

I did have a bad laptop an Amilo D1845 which had those symptoms, but my D901C has none.

Just my 2 cents.

 

No, I'm not an expert at batteries, but I am a LONG time user of laptops and lots of them over the last 20 years. Have probably personally owned close to 20, and used a lot more from work, friends, family, etc. Owned maybe a half dozen in 1990's the rest in the last 10-12 years.

Laptops from the 1990's would lose charge quite quickly and be dead in less than two years. One Sony laptop the battery was completely drained in 18 months with maybe only a couple dozen discharge cycles. But in the last ten years it has improved greatly.

My experience, leave the battery in the machine. People worry so much about this, I don't understand. For my larger laptops they were plugged in 90% of the time and battery left at 100%, every one of them never degraded more than 5% over the course of a year. For the smaller more portable laptops, I use them exclusively on battery for the most part, and find that the discharge cycle is a lot more damaging than what anything is done to the battery while sitting in the machine. Only exception if it is in a high heat area, but then it is just a poor laptop design.

For the effort and little gain you will get from storing your battery, you lose the integrated UPS feature, and risk of damaging your machine / losing data by ripping the cord out or losing power. People spend hundreds of dollars on UPS for their desktops, why would you remove something that is as critical to your computer operation. Not to mention, the power cable isn't securely engaged like a regular power cable is, and can easily become dislodged, as has happened to me on numerous occasions...

Just leave the battery in.

 

HTWingNut is correct especially the part about the power cable. What if there was a power cut? If you had a desktop you would loose everything you were doing but with a laptop it would just go into battery mode better to be safe than sorry!

 

Well and it is a good idea to get a UPS for your desktop anyhow. Speaking of which my desktop UPS is over four years old, but still holds a charge long enough for me to shut down.

If you have an occasional need for a spare battery, then best to deplete it to 40-50% and store in your basement or someplace cooler than 60F / 15C. Refrigerator might be too cool because it can get below below 40F/5C there. But for a primary battery, it makes little sense. Especially the Sager notebooks where you have to remove a bunch of screws just to get to the battery.

Edit: nevermind, you don't have to remove screws to access the battery, was thinking of my M11x. But you still have to flip the machine over which can be a PITA.

 

Thanks for adding some sanity to this conversation. Leave the battery alone and let it do its job. +1 rep.

 

Batteries will degrade no matter what you do, though I believe that it is a good practice to regularly discharge the battery every week or two.

 

Hearing mixed opinions here. Is one thing that everyone can agree is to always recharge the batteries before it gets below 50%?

 

Everybody can agree that heat is an issue and you shouldn't let you batteries drop below 50% if you can help it.

Taking the battery out however, is up to you. I would at the very least unplug the laptop when you are not using it unless the battery is out.

 

It wont hurt the batteries if you charge it while the laptop is off right? I can keep it charging all night while its off without reprocussion right?

 

I never leave a laptop plugged in overnight. This computer only takes about 1.5 hours to charge fully anyway.

On some older laptops without intelligent charging circuits, even if the computer was off, the power would cycle and trickle charge eventually leading to a small amount of heat and the cycles causing long-term loss of capacity. Those laptops only measure the voltage as an indicator of the charge.

 

I have been using my D901C for almost 4 years very intensively and plugged in most of the time. To my surprise the battery has not degraded yet. My experience was that batteries just don't last longer than 3-4 years, but maybe that has improved by now.

Anyway: Just leave the battery in!

 

I think people get lost in the details. Just enjoy your laptop and don't worry about the battery. It will most likely last for a few years at least.

 

Where do you get this 50% from? Battery does not degrade more below 50% , maybe 10%, but not 50%. If it does, only slightly.

There is no need to constantly manage the battery, period.

Yes heat does affect it, but heat management in the Sagers are more than sufficient to not worry about it. Most laptops it is not a worry. Secondly, batteries degrade over time whether you use them or not. So storing them is only delaying the inevitable by a slight amount.

Discharge and recharge are the biggest killers of a battery, and unfortunately it is their job to do just that. So by letting it sit at 50% and recharging you're doing as much if not more degradation than just leaving it fully charged.

Again, just use your battery. Leave it plugged in. I can guarantee after two years if I did that and someone else "managed" their battery and had similar usage patterns, the battery life of each would be within fifteen minutes of each other. In any case one can expect to have to buy a new battery after 2-2.5 years if it had some significant use or three years for moderate to little use.

 

This is pretty much the case. Batteries are rated for a number of discharge cycles, which will eventually cause them to run down. If you're really paranoid and want to save the battery, then remove it and never use it. But what's the point? You got it to use it, and you're not going to make a huge difference using it regularly. The average battery lasts 2-4 years depending almost entirely on luck and the environment (really hot storage will make it go faster). Long lived batteries are more of the exception rather than the rule- they're considered consumable wear and tear items for a reason.

 

The manual says...
Battery Life:
Battery life may be shortened through improper maintenance. To optimize the life
and improve its performance, fully discharge and recharge the battery at least
once every 30 days.

New Battery:
Always completely discharge, then fully charge, a new battery.

Recharging the Battery with the AC/DC Adapter:
The battery pack automatically recharges when the AC/DC adapter is attached and
plugged into an electrical outlet. If the computer is powered on, and in use, it will
take several hours to fully recharge the battery. When the computer is turned off but
plugged into an electrical outlet, battery charge time is less.

 

On my 3rd battery for my 3 1/2 year Vostro, I can safely say that leaving the battery in when fully charged while the mains is on is not beneficial to battery longevity. 2nd battery died faster than the 1st because monthly discharges to calibrate the battery helped it die faster due to reduced charged cycles. I'm now on my 3rd and have decided to use it as a sleep support system allowing the battery to discharge slowly while the notebook is sleeping. Battery wear now I estimate at 15-20% for a battery that's just over a year old.

 

That's weird because my Vostro 1500 at about 3.5 years old now has original battery and still gets a good 1.5 hours use. My Sager NP8662 at 15 months old had 5% battery wear left in @ 100% on AC 90% of the time. I can list a half dozen more instances the same case. Maybe sometimes it's just luck of bad battery or battery management of the PC.

Discharging once a month is absurd IMHO. I do it every few months if I haven't discharged it in a while. Even so, 12 discharges a year when a battery can survive 500 is only like 3%.

 

An additional point to make is that I only use high performance power settings on my laptop, that might be a factor in killing my previous batteries faster than normal expectations. I suspect my power board isn't quite normal either but previous visits by Dell technicians couldn't diagnose the problem and since my warranty has expired I'm not going to worry about it much.

Just as well my new Clevo is going to be in production soon, shame I don't get to use until October though.

 

Why does fully discharging it help the cycle? And when fully discharging should you save everything on your computer, let the battery completely run out and then plug it in?

 

You should never "fully" discharge a battery. I think batteries have safeguards so 0% as reported is not truly 0%. But even then if you discharged it that low, it could have some bad consequences. Just set your power profile to shut down at 5-10%. I think by default it's set to shut down at 5%.

And to be honest, the only thing a full discharge does is helps with calibration so you know how much battery life is left, so not really necessary. Can't hurt a couple times a year if you don't use battery much, but once a month is overkill.

 

interesting stuff
Lithium-ion battery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
scroll down to
Disadvantages
Cell life

 

Yes, this is why I prefer not to let my battery charge to 100% and leave it at around 50% and removed from the notebook and never let it charge overnight or stay plugged in. This laptop is more of a desktop replacement with it's power requirements so I usually don't take it anywhere without an AC outlet anyway. A battery engineer basically told me this same thing.

"A Standard (Cobalt) Li-ion cell that is full most of the time at 25 °C (77 °F) irreversibly loses approximately 20% capacity per year. Poor ventilation may increase temperatures, further shortening battery life. Loss rates vary by temperature: 6% loss at 0 °C (32 °F), 20% at 25 °C (77 °F), and 35% at 40 °C (104 °F). When stored at 40%–60% charge level, the capacity loss is reduced to 2%, 4%, and 15%, respectively."

I wonder if we will be seeing laptops with LiFePO4 (lithium iron phosphate) or LiPO batteries at some point. The iPad 2 uses a LiPo (Lithium-Polymer) battery.

 

I guess I'm having a hard time believing these "studies" considering I've personally witnessed nothing like that. I have had 15" primarily over the last eight plus years, and now a 17", plugged in 90% of the time at 100% capacity and none have lost more than 5% degradation over the course of a year's time. And I used them to game quite a bit too, so they saw lots of stress and heat output by the system. Machines include Sony Vaio (can't recall model), Dell XPS, Vostro 1500, Gateway P7811, Sager NP8662, now Sager NP8170.

 

To summarize....I think this is what it is:

If you leave the battery in, you have a UPS and you risk degradation.

If you take the battery out, you save it a little, but you risk power and data loss.

Gotta pick the lesser of the two evils.

Then again, I back up my data weekly so.....

Mr. Mysterious

 

And in all cases, your battery degrades over time whether you use it or not, regardless of charged capacity. People are thinking too hard. Laptops these days are a commodity, which means general user doesn't want to think about how to maintain or manage it, and are designed accordingly. Just use it. If it were that critical don't you think Sager / Clevo would have designed a quick removal battery? Instead it's lodged under a panel with a half dozen screws required to remove it.

Do people really think how they should best manage the battery for their cell phone or for their GPS or their iPad or Kindle? No. They just plug it in and use it when it's convenient for them, which is the way it should be.

 

Yeah, but you're comparing a $114 and $500 item (which I consider novelties, tbh) to a $1500 use-every-single-day-extensively with sensitive data item.

For people who are OCD about laptop maintenance (I raise my hand for this!) there is no such thing as "thinking too hard" when it comes to prolonging laptop longevity and protecting our investments.

Mr. Mysterious

 

I guess we could leave all of our batteries in the drawer and never use them so they would last longer but then again what would be the point of having batteries?

 

Protecting your investment would be leaving the battery in place so that you wouldn't risk harming your system should your AC connector come out or power dies. By managing and removing your battery, you might get an extra few months out of your battery at best. Batteries aren't that expensive to replace. No not exactly cheap, but considering how people don't hesitate to spend $100 on the deal pixel protection or $200 for an upgraded screen, or $300 for an SSD, all of which aren't critical to the operation of a laptop like the battery is.

Plus you noted you back up weekly, which IMHO isn't enough. I backup daily. It's automated through WHS, so don't have to worry about losing more than a day's work. Murphy's law, accidents don't happen the minute after you backup, but the minute before.

To be honest I don't care what people do with their batteries. But I don't like paranoia being spread that their batteries will be dead in a year if they leave them in their laptop. Far from the truth.

 

^This

10char

 

I've deal with hundreds of business lease laptops that clients leave plugged into docking stations almost all the time and I see horrible battery degradation.

Are you sure your batteries are calibrated properly? Maybe you aren't noticing the degradation because they are mis-calibrated.

 

Those examples are strictly mobile devices. A high performance Clevo is more of a desktop replacement. You can't even game on them without the AC adapter because the battery cannot provide enough power to the GPU.

Even worse, most high end Clevo's don't have optimus and even in idle, the GPUs consume horrible amounts of power and with internet on and a readable screen brightness (say you are at work, library, school, coffee shop wifi, etc.), you are only getting 2 hours out of it.

I basically don't use my battery at all because it is pretty much useless. It's just a UPS when I want it. If this was a good netbook or a notebook with optimus or a tablet on a low power ARM chip, taking out the battery makes no sense because it defeats the mobility of it.

A high end Clevo is not something you are going to be using on the go, carrying in your hands, etc. You will have to sit down and use it and even then the battery won't last very long and you'll need to plug in.

You're right, these are commodities and the general public don't care but some of us enthusiasts and nerds do care and like to maintain the lifespan of the hardware we purchase, even if it takes a few extra steps and removes some convenience for you. If you're the kind of person who buys an SSD and doesn't care how many writes he makes to it, you are the same kind of person who won't care about taking care of your battery.

It comes down to cost vs. convenience. You can buy a new battery for $120 and if you don't mind that, then that's good for you. I've purchased used laptops before that were only a year old where the battery only lasted 30 minutes. I don't take the same chances with my own hardware.

My battery IS quick removal. It's in the front and I can slide it out with one hand without even looking. If your battery is not easily accessible or you have a Macbook or something, of course it is not worth the inconvenience of removing it everytime you plug in.

It's a personal choice. If I know I am going to be sitting down for a long time, I take it out as it takes less than only 3 seconds to pop it out. If it's a busy day, I'll leave it in.

 

Ok, settle down people. This thread has a simple question, and let's not turn it into a debate. Let's find some answers out of this. I think the OP (and others, for that matter) should choose for him/herself.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Yep, we have the Clevo/Sager manual and what it says, then we have the pure battery physics as outlined in Wikipedia, then we have lots of personal experience and conjecture thrown in to boot.

Personally, I live on the edge of the grid and often spend days at a time way way off grid in the bush... having power is critical to me. So, for me, in addition to my vehicle power I carry 2 12v automobile batteries and a adapter/converter to make it thru the day.

Personal Choice? No Way! The true way must be dictated to the masses! This is America! (or not)

namaste, Peter

PS: please note the Humor, but the namaste is for real

 

Tesla > Edison

My 9 cell battery is a UPS that tilts my laptop to a nice angle. I have no idea how long either will last on a charge and I'll probably never find out.

 

It's unfortunate how power hungry these things are when they need not be. If only Clevo had left some options for users to enable or disable Optimus on their own if they wanted to. If we had Optimus or Quicksync to use the IGP, we could double our battery life.

 

I have never replaced a battery on any laptop that I have owned. I usually upgrade in 2-3 years and have noticed no degredation in that time period. I never take special precautions. I may keep this laptop longer since I can upgrade it so maybe I'll need a new one in time. I'm actually amazed how far battery technology has come especially for personal electronics. They can put out quite a bit of juice for quite a period of time.