T450 internal battery - extending its life; removal and life extension of external battery

[sophia333]

Hi Everyone,

RE INTERNAL BATTERY:
I just got a T450 and am concerned about extending the life of the internal battery. It seems to always be charged up to 100% when I have the power adapter plugged in. This concerns me: Seems it will result in a relatively short life for the internal batter (or at least the internal battery will quickly not be able to hold much charge). I called technical support about disabling the internal battery to extend its life, but the level 2 person I spoke with tried a few things and told me he found that if you disable the internal battery you can't use the computer. So I'm wondering:

1) Has anyone found anything different regarding disabling the internal battery to extend its life?
2) If not, would it be better to unplug the computer once the internal battery reaches 100% to draw down the internal battery rather than always have it charged up to 100% (even though this might be kind of a hassle on a daily basis)?
3) Or, given lack of solutions, should we just be psychologically ready for the internal battery to lose ability to hold charge? Perhaps even after just a year or two?

RE EXTERNAL BATTERY:
I had a really hard time removing the external battery. The directions say you should disable the internal battery before removing the external battery. This seemed a strange requirement to me. When I checked with technical support they say it's just a super safety precaution. So, I didn't do that, but had a really hard time getting the battery out. There are two latches that must each be held in place and then you need a third hand to get the battery out. Also, I saw in the directions that if you will store/not use your external batteries for awhile it's better to have them charged to just 30 to 50%. Some questions:

1) Do you agree that we don't need to disable the internal battery to take the external battery out even though the directions say this? (Tech support told me it would not damage the computer to ignore this direction.)
2) Any thoughts on how to remove the battery more easily with two hands instead of the three that seem to be required? (I thought the latches might stay put on their own, but they don't seem to.) Is this as difficult for others as it is for me?
3) Do you agree that it's better to only charge batteries that won't be used for a while to 30 to 50%? (The technical support people I spoke with were not aware of this.)

Thank you for any thoughts!

Sophia

[brchan]

If you are using Windows 7, you should be able to install lenovo power manager (if it isn't already installed) and set battery thresholds for the batteries. This doesn't seem available for Windows 8, though. If you are using linux, you can follow the instructions here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Tp_smapi.

Since setting the battery threshold seems to be done at a low level, it works independent of the OS. Once set, only re-seating the batteries will reset the charge thresholds (other than manually changing them again). Thus, if you are using Windows 8, I think it would be possible to boot off of a Linux live usb and set the charge thresholds and boot back into Windows 8 with the new set values.

If you do set/store the battery, its best to keep it around 60% charge.

[sophia333]

Thanks Brchan for these insights,

My T450 has Windows 8.1 and I haven't been able to find an option for stopping the recharging of the internal battery (or external one for that matter), but it's good to know that such a thing exists with other operating systems. Currently, if I use AC, the internal 3 cell battery will be mostly at 100% in an ongoing fashion. The other option is to unplug the machine when that internal battery is charged up and draw it down, though this is somewhat cumbersome if you use your computer as an all day tool and I'm not sure whether it will increase the life of the battery. My understanding from Lenovo technical support is that when you disable the internal battery the machine will not operate. So, options seem quite limited.

Sophia

[classybum2]

I share many of these same concerns, and wish Lenovo power manager was available for this laptop under windows 8.1.

In my perfect world, i'd want to alternate which battery is drained first. I'd also want to have two power profiles, once that cycles from 40-90% for max battery life, and once that would fully charge the batteries if I know i'm going on the road.

I just checked Lenovo's site, and see that there are drivers for Lenovo power manager for windows 7. I may go back to windows 7 to have this ability, maybe not the alternating battery but at least the charge thresholds.

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product ... nkpad-t450

I gave a quick try of installing the win7 power manager on win8 and it failed. Maybe i'll see if there's a way to force it. I saw on teh internets that someone had power manager running on an x230 on windows8, but they started on 7 and upgraded to 8:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads ... er.733876/

[sophia333]

Hi Classybum2,
Thanks for this info. I can't imagine why Lenovo didn't include the power manager for windows 8.1. Perhaps they haven't gotten around to it yet? Or perhaps the internal battery setup means that the computer always has to run off the internal battery. Technical support told me there is no way to disable the internal battery that does not turn off the computer.

In general, when I called technical support they seemed to be pretty clueless as to why I'd even want to remove the removable battery. ("Why do you want to take the battery out?" I was asked.) Makes me wonder if batteries are getting better so that this is not the issue in terms of battery life that it was before? Or perhaps instead they are expecting people just to replace their computers more often? In the past (with my Thinkpad R60, I got a whole lot more out of my battery by practicing good "battery hygiene" - taking the battery out when not using it or not charging it.

[classybum2]

I'm hoping they just haven't gotten around to creating power manager for win 8.1.

Regarding disabling the internal battery, you can do it through BIOS. I found the instructions in the hardware maintenance manual:

Disabling the internal battery pack
Before replacing any FRU, ensure that you have disabled the internal battery pack by doing the following:
1. Disconnect the ac power adapter and all cables from the computer.
2. Restart the computer. When the logo screen is displayed, press F1 to start the ThinkPad Setup program.
3. Go to Config ➙ Power ➙ Disable built-in battery.
4. Press Enter. A Setup Confirmation window is displayed.
5. Click Yes in the Setup Confirmation window. The internal battery pack is disabled and the computer
turns off. Wait for a few minutes to let the computer cool.

Aside from hardware maintenance, it's probably not worth manually turning the internal battery on and off all the time. Or rather, it's too much trouble for me to bother I had a pretty good run with my previous laptop, a nearly ten year old Z60M, still have the original battery and it has about 1.5 hours of runtime still.

The internal battery can be removed as well, but it's a pain. Bunch of screws, and you have to pull the bottom case, sim card and tray, and external battery.

As far as I understand, the biggest killer for a Lion battery is a fully discharge. And by killer, I mean a reduction of charge cycles before capacity starts to reduce. I believe these batteries should be able to attain about 500 charge cycles before noticeable capacity decrease, and things like full discharges (and even holding charge at 100%) will reduce the cycle count at rated capacity. I notice that my T450 does not switch batteries until the external hits 5%, which is lower than I would like. I'll see if I can contact someone at Lenovo about power manager.

[sophia333]

That's a great point about the discharge to very low levels being the thing that most reduces battery life. I actually heard that from some alternative energy vehicle experts as well. What I'm wondering, then, in terms of extending the life of the internal battery if it would make most sense to keep the machine plugged in most of the time. (So far, I've been alternating, but only plugging in again when I get warned that I'm down to 10%.) In other words, would constantly being plugged (which always seems to keep the internal battery fully charged) in be less of an internal battery life destroyer than would letting it go down to 10% time after time as I'm currently doing? And the other thing I'm wondering is if it would make most sense to keep the external battery in place all of the time as well - assuming we are more worried about preserving the internal battery than the external one?

It's just a whole different way of thinking about battery life preservation than with my R60, which I usually used plugged in without battery and none of these issues to worry about. The battery on my thinkpad previous to the R60 died young, I think because I just always left it in place even though I was mostly using the computer plugged in.

One other note on disabling the internal battery: I was told by tech support that the computer will not operate when it's disabled, so for that reason (if it's correct) it will not be a solution even if the hassle didn't bother the users. The directions for disabling are, they told me, a safety precaution for when you are replacing parts on the computer.