Dinging noise

[Sand]

I've been having a dinging noise coming from my T42 and wonder if this is something happening to the battery or the laptop itself. The adapter gets quite warm . It's more than three years old now. My battery percentage is always dropping down to 99% and when I let it discharge totally it comes back up to 100%. But now it's dropping to 98% at times. How do you know when the battery needs to be replaced, does it drop all the way to 0%?

Sometimes it also sounds like it's buzzing. But the dinging noise, once it starts, is a regular sound like a timer ringing. Not intermittent I mean.

I don't know if there's any connection, but my Outlook Express does not do some of the functional things it should since this started, like opening messages with the Enter key, going back to Inbox using the Ctrl+I keys, etc. Sometimes it even freezes up.

Thanks for any help in advance,
Sand

[Moroner]

If you mute your sound, do you still hear that sound or not?

Also discharging your battery completely is not recommended to increase the lifetime of Lithium-Ion ones, actually it is harmful to your battery, and only necessary if your battery indicator becomes way off to recalibrate it.

As for the quality of the battery, the easiest way to check is to open Battery Information on the battery MaxiMiser app, open Battery Health, and see how much of your original capacity you still have left. After 3 years, it is probably down to less than 50%, there is a reason you only get one year warranty on it.

[Sand]

Yes, it happens without the sound being on. I almost always have my sound turned off anyway.

Wow, I've been doing this discharging the battery almost since I got it because I read that it was recommended to prolong it's life. I do everything I can to save the battery, i.e. keeping light on screen down, turning laptop off all the time, etc.

So then what is the purpose of the percentages showing on the Taskbar for? I mean, if the Battery Information on the MaxiMiser shows I only have 50%, what is the 100% that shows on the Taskbar mean?

Thanks,
Sandra

[davidspalding]

100% generally means the total available charge for the battery with the number of cycles on it. By putting more cycles (drain down to 0%) on a battery, you are reducing its fully charged capacity. Look in the third tab of Power Manager (Battery Information) for more data.

As for the dinging ... I don't think they've put real bells in computers since the days of the model 40 TTY. I think you're hearing something in your Windows environment dinging.