battery life - continuosly connected to power source

[gettingDeep]

Hi All !
When I got the T60p I though let me power the battery completely and then remove the power, and use the laptop till it drains the battery, and save some money on electricity After about 1 month, I see a message from the ThinkCenter saying that battery life decreases by doing this. (This is coool !!!!! The thinkcenter is not as crappy as I thought..)

Now, here is my question to all the folks -

What is the Best strategy to keep battery life optimum ?

[pianowizard]

Run your laptop on AC as much as possible, with the battery in the machine. Use the battery only when necessary.

[Orevin]

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=34978
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=21976
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=22867
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=34055
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=33337
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=31286

and more can be found here

[tomh009]

Run your laptop on AC as much as possible, with the battery in the machine. Use the battery only when necessary.

Agreed. And running on battery does not save any electricity -- you are just running on the extra power that was used to charge the battery in the first place.

[nrgetik]

Run your laptop on AC as much as possible, with the battery in the machine. Use the battery only when necessary.

Agreed. And running on battery does not save any electricity -- you are just running on the extra power that was used to charge the battery in the first place.

Yep.

[Muse]

The battery is li-ion and their life expectancy has everything to do with how you treat them. They can pretty much die in as little as 2 years or less. Or, they can be made to last 10 years, or so I'm told, perhaps more.

My strategy is this: if I'm not in need of the battery, I use the adapter. I remove the battery in this circumstance for two reasons:

1. The heat from being in the laptop will speed deterioration.
2. The battery will degrade much faster if it is fully charged or nearly so. Of course, when in the laptop and the adapter is in use, the battery quickly achieves maximum charge.

Li-ion battery disintegration is minimized at about a 40% charge, so that's about where I leave my battery if I don't need it. Keeping it refrigerated would also help, but I haven't been doing that. It's cold enough in my house in the winter!

[pianowizard]

if I'm not in need of the battery, I use the adapter. I remove the battery in this circumstance for two reasons:

If you accidently disconnect the AC adapter, you'd power off the laptop and lose all unsaved data/settings.

2. The battery will degrade much faster if it is fully charged or nearly so.

You can get the Battery Maximiser to stop charging at say 80%.

[Muse]

if I'm not in need of the battery, I use the adapter. I remove the battery in this circumstance for two reasons:

If you accidently disconnect the AC adapter, you'd power off the laptop and lose all unsaved data/settings.

2. The battery will degrade much faster if it is fully charged or nearly so.

You can get the Battery Maximiser to stop charging at say 80%.

I try to immediately save data I'd hate to lose

Battery Maximiser? Is that a standard utility or an add on? In general, I'd probably prefer to not charge beyond 80%.

[dorin]

sorry but how much money do you think you save by not using the charger? seriously! i think you take a headake pill when you dont have a headake, but whatever.

as said you can set the battery maximizer / power manager (which i think you use in a t60) (the ibm's one not windows power manager) and set to start charging when below 30 and to stop at 40% for ex. in this way you avoid any dataloss in case of powercut and you keep the bat to minimun to avoid degradation.

about heat from lappy and battery...i can say that i used my x40 in last 2 years 99.9% everyday at least 8hrs and even if the bat is 270cycles still can hold about 60%...

[pianowizard]

Battery Maximiser? Is that a standard utility or an add on?

It's preinstalled on most Thinkpads. It's that green battery symbol in the system tray. If it's not already there, you can download it from Lenovo's site. I have forgotten whether the file you want is called Battery maximiser or something else though.

[pinesol]

MuseBattery Maximiser? Is that a standard utility or an add on? In general, I'd probably prefer to not charge beyond 80%.

Fn+F3 --> Manage Settings --> Battery Information --> Battery Maintance

[tomatoeblue]

not to go off topic or anything, but you can save on electricity if you charge the laptop fully using your neighbour's outdoor electric sockets, or the sockets of a library or a public building of some sort, then come home to use the laptop until power runs out, then plug it in again to your neighbour's sockets...

this would work well if you have 2 batteries, or also the ultrabay battery, so through the course of a few hours, you would have enough juice to last through the rest of the day.

[rkawakami]

To further expand on that idea.... how about "free" energy:

http://www.ascscientific.com/solar.html
http://www.sierrasolar.com/prod_store/LAP_laptop.html

and some others.... Note that it can't independently power the laptop (wattage is too low). They are used to either charge the battery with the system off or to slow the drain of the battery by supplying a little additional power.

[gettingDeep]

Thanks All ! this has been pretty useful.

[claudeo]

not to go off topic or anything, but you can save on electricity if you charge the laptop fully using your neighbour's outdoor electric sockets, or the sockets of a library or a public building of some sort, then come home to use the laptop until power runs out, then plug it in again to your neighbour's sockets...

this would work well if you have 2 batteries, or also the ultrabay battery, so through the course of a few hours, you would have enough juice to last through the rest of the day.

Clever, but this will cost you a lot more than what you save in power costs because you will be going through many more charge/discharge cycles and reduce the battery life accordingly. Batteries are rather expensive to replace...

[BruisedQuasar]

All I know is I get a good 5 to 6 years use from my Li-ion batteries and I leave them in my notebooks and mobile devices, use them only when necessary.

I thought the already used battery that came in my T23 over a year ago was down to 30 minute charges until a battery rebuilder told me to discharge and fully charge it five to seven cycles and see what happens. He told me to do it this way: Reboot notebook into pre-XP boot menu (press F7) and pick "safemode DOS prompt". You get a text screen. Let it just sit until the PC turns itself off. Recharge and do again.

After just 2 cycles, my battery was up to a full hour. After 4 cycles, I had nearly 2 1/4 hour charge. I'm told this cycle bypassed Windows power utility and let the battery discharge as low as possible. Li-ions, an engineer tells me, do not have a memory chip but there is a phenomenon that occurs over time called "digital memory effect".

The cycling I described above supposedly eliminates digital memory effect. Whatever the explanation, it works for me.

[rkawakami]

If the T60x version of PC Doctor operates the same as the ones I use for the 600X and T2x systems...

If you don't want to sit around and monitor your discharging battery (i.e., time it to see how long it lasts), nor do you want to fool around with booting into Safe Mode, download PC Doctor and run the "Battery Rundown" test (in the Utility menu). It will exercise the system by running CPU and systemboard diagnostics, while at the same time, it keeps track on how long it is running. When it shuts off, charge the battery back up then repeat the process. This should be faster than simply letting the laptop sit idle; the background diagnostics will drain the battery quicker.

So, if you're not around when the system dies, how do you know how long it ran? The next time you run the diagnostic, it will allow you to check what the previous run time was. It appears that this runtime information is being stored on a memory chip inside the battery.

Since PC Doctor is booted into it's own DOS environment, there is no danger in having an open file on the hard disk when power is cut off.

You will have to create several bootable diskettes or you can create a bootable CD (assuming you have a CD burner and software to write the .ISO file). PC Doctor is listed under the Diagnostics heading here:

Software and Device Drivers - ThinkPad T60, T60p

[Muse]

MuseBattery Maximiser? Is that a standard utility or an add on? In general, I'd probably prefer to not charge beyond 80%.

Fn+F3 --> Manage Settings --> Battery Information --> Battery Maintance

Thanks. I see two things I can do there. The default is start charging when the battery is at 96% and proceed to 100%. That I don't want. I can choose the 2nd option, which is to maximize battery lifespan. I have no idea how effective that is. If I choose that option, defaulted is for the program to notify me when things change. That presumably would be if the battery's characteristics somehow substantially change ( ). The 3rd option is to set it up customized, and for me that would be to maximize at 40% unless I expect to be using the battery a significant amount shortterm. Have any take on these? TIA.

Edit: As an experiment, I created a new power scheme and set the battery to start charging at 39% and stop at 44% (it wouldn't allow me to save when charging to 40%). However, what I'm getting is this setting in every power scheme. I'd like just this one power scheme to reflect these settings. Surely I've done something wrong, but I don't see what.

[Zeus]

not to go off topic or anything, but you can save on electricity if you charge the laptop fully using your neighbour's outdoor electric sockets, or the sockets of a library or a public building of some sort, then come home to use the laptop until power runs out, then plug it in again to your neighbour's sockets...

this would work well if you have 2 batteries, or also the ultrabay battery, so through the course of a few hours, you would have enough juice to last through the rest of the day.

Clever, but this will cost you a lot more than what you save in power costs because you will be going through many more charge/discharge cycles and reduce the battery life accordingly. Batteries are rather expensive to replace...

not only the replacement, but the fact that Li-Ions do NOT retain all of their charge. for example, if it took 100watts to charge the battery, that will only provide the laptop with 90watts, therefore your costs are much higher.