Do you use the battery care function, or not?

Are you guys using the battery care function or not?

(Reminder: battery care function stops charging at 80% or 50% to prevent battery degradation)

I've been using the 80% for a long time.
With my Z for almost 3 years, until it stopped working, and now with my SB.
EDIT: I used the same original battery with the Z in all those ~3 years and it still gave me around 3 hours (at 80%) until the end.

I started to wonder if it really worth using only 80% of your full battery capacity.
Not having the 7.5 hours of battery is irritating.


Vote you mind and explain your thoughts

 

While this thread is open, can I ask a question? I've seen talk of this a lot but always wondered, does this particular function matter if the unit is plugged in all the time?

 

Yes it does pretty well. Charging never goes over your selected percentage value, even when the comp is shut down. I guess the VAIO Control Center / Batt care utility sets some non volatile memory in the battery controller or charging controller in the laptop (a guy with two batteries can figure out by setting battery care on one battery, swap batts and check what happens with the second one) so your setting keeps stored. I think that option helps retain capacity of your battery since Li-Ion chemicals do degrade on full charge and especially deep discharge. Latter is prevented by the battery controller itself.

Hope that helps, btw, I am using 80% battery care and got 3% wear over 10 months everyday combined mobile and desktop use, which is pretty good IMO. My older hp compaq laptop had a almost dead battery after 1 year.

 

As far as I understand, yes.
It matters when you fully charge your battery. It prevents the "overcharge" that occurs when it reaching 100%.
When you plug it in all the time, it keeps the capacity at 100%, which is exactly the problematic area.

But why 80%? why not 95%? (or 99% like in Mac)

Maybe someone who knows better can enlighten us.

 

Voltage matters for the chemical degradation. Standard batt has 6 cells (3 serial x 2 parallel), 3.6V each cell, that means 10.8V nominal voltage. Li-Ion cells can be charged up to 4.2V (12.6V) which is reached when battery is charged over approx. 95%. 80% charge is 11.8V which is safe. I dont know for macs but I think 95% and more does not have any advantage over 100% charge. I think MBP's do use Li-Polymer batteries which are better (but more expensive) than cylindric Li-Ion batteries.

 

I ran for several months without enabling the battery care function, and then a few months at 80% and am now at 50%, nowadays mostly on AC power 95% of the time. 5.5% degradation after 1 year.

 

Hey, thanks you guys for the info. Jusst double-checking, I should run the battery down to below 80% before turning it on, correct?

 

Yes use it on three of my Sony laptops - keeps the battery better than charging to 100%. My 2.5 year old FW still works well with the original battery and has a 1% wear factor. The others have not had any wear. Highly recommend it for helping to maintain the battery.

 

Just select 80%, then disconnect the AC power and run on batteries until 80% charge remains. Now connect the power adapter again.

I prefer 50% as I seldom leave the office. When I have to go out and expect to need more battery backup, I change the setting to 80% or even 100%, charge it to that level, then change back to 50% when I get back to the office.

 

Don't worry about that, our Z's do have a battery drain feature, which eats a good 3-4% a day when turned off and unplugged, you'll come down to 80% in just a short time.

 

If you frequently unplug, remember cycles are still being used up, so you may not see any real gain from this feature thus. But if you're plugged in alot, months down the line you'll realise that you have more battery capacity than if you left it at 100%. its a long-term trade off feature.
you dont have to worry about discharging to X% before enabling it. the laptop will automatically wait till it drops to a certain % before initiating charging both down and up.

 

I do use the battery care function at 80%.

Initially when I fooled around in VAIO Care I was prompted to set it to charge up to 80% but I thought, "why make me carry less battery?" so I just ignored it.

After using my Z at school for like 2 months I found that my Z won't even get under 30% during normal school days on battery so I figured that I'd might as well use the battery care function. The 80% does prove a problem sometimes so I do carry my AC adapter when all classes require the use of a computer, but the AC adapter is featherweight anyways.

 

True, but if you enable the feature just before you shut down the laptop and go on an extended vacation, it will take ages for the battery to self discharge, so it will spend considerable time at >80%.

 

My SZ is just over 3 years old and my battery is at 0% wear. For the last 18 months or so i've set the battery care to 50%. It's mainly my desktop laptop now.
My Sony TT also has 0% wear. It seems to work for me.

 

Since day 1 I keep BC @80./. and after 20 month got a wear of 14.7./.
Vaio TZ.Go figure...Right now get 5:30hrs of use..

 

How can I know my wear level?

EDIT: I found NHC, but it's not for 64bit. what's the best after NHC?

 

Get BatteryBar. Very good.

 

I can't use it on my Z because it's not supported on Windows XP. But I wouldn't use it unless the laptop was plugged in all the time. I use it on battery mode quite often, so 100% battery works ok. And I get 4 hours of battery life.

 

Yeah. If you set battery care level at 80% (on Windows), it will stay that way even in Linux. Very neat. That being said, I turn it off when I know I need that extra 20%.