Battery

[wfb4000]

Is it damaging to my 8-cell battery pack if I continue to leave the ac adapter attached to the laptop and outlet even though the battery is charged 100%?

[phiber]

I think it is best you take the battery out, I read somewhere here that the Li-on battery does not like heat and from personal experience a battery that is fully charged heats up. So it is best you take out the battery once it is charged and you are using laptop with the AC adaptor.

[eigh]

a couple of things:



1. yes too much heat can make the battery explode and quite frankly, [censored] you up (however, the ammount of heat required by this, the battery would need to self short, to have an internal current that flows very fast super heating the battery, thus making it explode. if one cell explodes from heat, you better believe the rest will) you will not generate that much heat if you leave the 8 cell plugged in after its done charging


2. do you have the 8 cell and another battery hooked up? (if you have the 8 cell and another battery hooked up, why would you need two batteries hooked up, if youre not using any batteries!?)


3. not having a battery in and just trying to run off of the ac adapter is dumb to me. i have an old old laptop whose battery doesnt work. whenever someone accidently kicks my ac adapter, laptop shuts off and i get fuxed. (moral of the story, keep your battery in, even though its not charging)


4. think of your battery as a little tank, think of your outlet as a hose, think of the hose connecting to your battery in a T shape. because of the nature of the T shape (water coming in from the left, down spout heading to the tank, and the right spout going to the lawn) after your tank gets full, is water forced to go into the tank, making the tank explode after some time? no, the rest of the water goes out to the lawn.


its the same way your battery and ac adapter work. while your batt is charging, and youre using your thinkpad, your ac adapter is pulling enough juice to charge your battery AND power your thinkpad. when your battery is full, your ac adapter stops giving it electricity, and the adapter only pulls enough electricity to power the computer.






all in all, leave your battery in, it will be fine.




fake edit: meh, i just foudn this link,

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

and it does say that lithium ions will be effected by heat more than they will of the memory effect. idk man, im not a webpage.

[selvan777]

Mine is plugged into a switched outlet at home that's always switched on when the laptop's being used and I always leave the battery in. Having the battery in and the AC connected 24/7 will never generate enough heat to blow up but I guess anything's possible. And, based on my experience, having it plugged in and powered at all times when being used will extend it's life.

[dmdsoftware]

Just leave it plugged in. Simple as that. That's what I've been doing. No explosions etc. Once the battery gets nearly fully charged, it doesn't generate any heat. Only when the battery is almost fully depleted will it heat up during charging.

Also, think of it this way. If your using your thinkpad on ac and the power goes out while your working, wouldn't you like the piece of mind knowing your thinkpad will keep going because of the battery. Otherwise, you're playing with fate, and your hard drive head may be in a perfect alignment for a head crash into the platters. Bye-bye data (and $200).

Think of the battery as your UPS. Would you run your home computer/server without an UPS unit attached? I don't think so. They why would you run your thinkpad without its battery?

[dmdsoftware]

...

[LordGop]

Otherwise, you're playing with fate, and your hard drive head may be in a perfect alignment for a head crash into the platters. Bye-bye data (and $200).

Question for ya, how would the HDD head ever "crash" into the platters because of a lost of power?

[dmdsoftware]

Otherwise, you're playing with fate, and your hard drive head may be in a perfect alignment for a head crash into the platters. Bye-bye data (and $200).

Question for ya, how would the HDD head ever "crash" into the platters because of a lost of power?

When you're accessing data (read/write), the drive head floats above the platter (it is supported by the spinning of the platters). If you pull the plug while the drive head is over the platter, the platters spin down and the arm is not able to swing back (no power) and therefore, the arm comes to rest on the platters.

Sometimes this crash can physically destroy part of the platter and/or create enough debre in the unit that drive will shortly fail. Another possibility is that the arm becomes stuck in its current place - which involves opening the unit and moving the arm back manually (not something you cannot do without a clean room).

When the disc normally spins downs (on proper shutdown), the arm returns to its resting point, off the platters. The arm also rests when you don't access any data.

[whizkid]

Hard drives used to crash on power failure when the head was controlled with a stepper motor. Not any more.

Now the head position is controlled by a voice coil and a spring, much like a speaker. When power fails, the spring pulls the head back to the safe zone where a ramp lifts the head from the platter. It does this before the spinning disk slows down much, so the head remains floating while it is being parked.

There is NO danger of a head crash from power failure on modern (like the past ten years) hard drive.

The only way you can get a head crash is from physical shock, which is what the new (like the past year or two) accelerometer is for. If it detects the machine falling, or hitting the floor, or whatever it detects, it parks your hard drive head. It takes milliseconds.

[LordGop]

Hard drives used to crash on power failure when the head was controlled with a stepper motor. Not any more.

Now the head position is controlled by a voice coil and a spring, much like a speaker. When power fails, the spring pulls the head back to the safe zone where a ramp lifts the head from the platter. It does this before the spinning disk slows down much, so the head remains floating while it is being parked.

There is NO danger of a head crash from power failure on modern (like the past ten years) hard drive.

The only way you can get a head crash is from physical shock, which is what the new (like the past year or two) accelerometer is for. If it detects the machine falling, or hitting the floor, or whatever it detects, it parks your hard drive head. It takes milliseconds.

exactly.....my little " " dmdsoftware, was to show that I was questioning what you were saying, but thanks for typing all that out

[emorphien]

Leaving the battery in shouldn't cause any major problems in terms of explosions or fires, but it can wear down the battery and reduce overall capacity over time. I'd still recommend keeping a battery in there, maybe your old one that only holds 20 minutes of charge for example. No point in risking the capacity of your good batteries if you've got another that's already half dead to use as your battery backup.

edit: I'm not saying explosions and fires are impossible, but those are the results of defects and extreme circumstances. If it's a defect it will get recalled, if you feel it getting hot enough to melt or catch fire, get it replaced. I've left batteries in my 4 yr old Dell with no problems for weeks and they really didn't even get that warm. It seemed to cycle on and off from charging them, and they were in the front of the laptop away from the processor and GPU.

[selvan777]

None the less, I'm sure pulling the plug on an up and running system is not a good thing and should be minimized if at all possible.