Battery advise

[Peterloh]

Hi all,

Just gotten a R52 and am using it quite often in office & home. The shop advised me to remove the battery from the laptop everytime I plug in for long usage. Not sure if this is a good tradeoff for extending battery life as constant removal of battery pack might increase the chance of damaging the laptop battery bay connector. Beside it is very inconvenient to do so. Any advise wil be appreciated

[storage_man]

PeterLoh

I too struggle with this issue. But if my laptop plans to spend a week connected to the AC supply, I always remove the battery. If your going to use your laptop connected to a AC supply for only a short period of time then leave it in there. Check out this site - http://www.espow.ca/tips.htm It has some good pointers.

Storage_man

[Peterloh]

Thanks for the website reference

[Jona]

I was also wondering about this. Is it really bad for the battery if you use primarily AC power and leave the battery in? Like Peterloh said it is very inconvenient to remove the battery all the time but if you could prolong the life of your battery with say one year it could be worth it.

[jdhurst]

There is some debate about all this. Lithium Ion batteries should withstand remaining in the machine while plugged in. My T41 is now 20 months old, has the original battery, runs on AC most of the time with the battery always installed, and is sitting at 70 percent capacity (i.e., a wear rate of 30 percent). It runs fine on battery whenever I need for a couple of hours.

Batteries deteriorate, used or not, and with modern batteries, they probably will be fine left in the machine. ... JD Hurst

[paul*robertson]

Four years on is this advice still the same. My X61 (okay, different forum, but same topic) i use most of the time at home. I thought about getting a duff battery and leaving that in, and put my new battery in a drawer in the hope of extending its life.

[yak]

Isn't all this irrelevant if you set the Power Manager not to charge the battery above 80% for example?

My battery always stays in my T60. Very handy for moving between rooms or as UPS.

[paul*robertson]

Isn't all this irrelevant if you set the Power Manager not to charge the battery above 80% for example?

My battery always stays in my T60. Very handy for moving between rooms or as UPS.

And the reason for doing that is to help preserve the battery?

[Tõnis]

Good information here:

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/

It's my understanding that, in addition to charge cycles (i.e. depletions and charges) and time, it's primarily the heat generated by a laptop and leaving the battery at 100% charge that might have some minimal effect on reducing battery life while plugged in. Lowering the charging threshold when the laptop is plugged into AC power helps remove one of those factors -- the 100% charged factor -- though I'm not sure about the heat. If you want to store a lithium ion battery for an extended period, it's best to store it at 40% capacity ... in the fridge.