Best laptop battery care

[root]

We have several laptops that are rarely used. As best
I can find, it is fatal to a Li Ion battery to go
completely dead, and that has often happened on our
laptops. Three of our relatively new laptops are
a Thinkpad, Dell, and an HP. I observe that the charge
light on the laptop goes off at some point. The HP
charger which feels hot when charging, feels cold to
the touch when the charge light goes off.

It seems to me tht the charging circuits in the laptops
are smart enough to leave the chargers plugged in all
the time.

I would appreciate comments from anyone who has adopted
a similar charging strategy.

Thanks.

 

[pfjw@aol.com]

On Monday, December 12, 2016 at 1:35:05 PM UTC-5, root wrote:

It seems to me that the charging circuits in the laptops
are smart enough to leave the chargers plugged in all
the time.

They are. My laptop stays plugged in all the time except when I am traveling. And then, I usually get somewhere between 5 and 7 hours of use without problems. The computer is 2 years old at this moment.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

 

[John Robertson]

On 2016/12/12 10:35 AM, root wrote:

We have several laptops that are rarely used. As best
I can find, it is fatal to a Li Ion battery to go
completely dead, and that has often happened on our
laptops. Three of our relatively new laptops are
a Thinkpad, Dell, and an HP. I observe that the charge
light on the laptop goes off at some point. The HP
charger which feels hot when charging, feels cold to
the touch when the charge light goes off.

It seems to me tht the charging circuits in the laptops
are smart enough to leave the chargers plugged in all
the time.

I would appreciate comments from anyone who has adopted
a similar charging strategy.

Thanks.

I leave all my laptops plugged in when in use and tend to get batteries
that last five or more years. Obviously they are used from time to time
on batteries, but we mostly use these in our shop as semi-desktop
machines that are portable. I take mine home every night for example,
the rest are left wherever the staff last used them (cable locks).

John :-#)#

--
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www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 13/12/16 05:38, John Robertson wrote:

On 2016/12/12 10:35 AM, root wrote:
We have several laptops that are rarely used. As best
I can find, it is fatal to a Li Ion battery to go
completely dead, and that has often happened on our
laptops. Three of our relatively new laptops are
a Thinkpad, Dell, and an HP. I observe that the charge
light on the laptop goes off at some point. The HP
charger which feels hot when charging, feels cold to
the touch when the charge light goes off.

It seems to me tht the charging circuits in the laptops
are smart enough to leave the chargers plugged in all
the time.

I would appreciate comments from anyone who has adopted
a similar charging strategy.

Thanks.


I leave all my laptops plugged in when in use and tend to get batteries
that last five or more years. Obviously they are used from time to time
on batteries, but we mostly use these in our shop as semi-desktop
machines that are portable. I take mine home every night for example,
the rest are left wherever the staff last used them (cable locks).

Same.

 

[Chris Jones]

On 13/12/2016 05:35, root wrote:

We have several laptops that are rarely used. As best
I can find, it is fatal to a Li Ion battery to go
completely dead, and that has often happened on our
laptops. Three of our relatively new laptops are
a Thinkpad, Dell, and an HP. I observe that the charge
light on the laptop goes off at some point. The HP
charger which feels hot when charging, feels cold to
the touch when the charge light goes off.

It seems to me tht the charging circuits in the laptops
are smart enough to leave the chargers plugged in all
the time.

I would appreciate comments from anyone who has adopted
a similar charging strategy.

Thanks.

Keeping lithium batteries continuously fully charged will shorten their
life too.

Some people recommend charging the battery to 40%, then removing the
battery and storing it in a cool place, and then every few months check
the voltage to make sure it does not get too discharged.

On better laptops you can set them to stop charging at say 50% instead
of 100%, which will make the batteries suffer less damage if
continuously plugged in. Of course if you need to use the battery, it
is only half charged so the run time will be shorter unless you fully
charge it first.

Also heat shortens the life of batteries. Better laptops are designed
such that the battery is not heated by the CPU. Some poor quality
laptops allow the battery to get heated by other parts of the computer.
If you have one of these laptops then charging the battery to 40% and
removing it and storing it is a cool place may be a better strategy.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

 

http://www.powerstream.com/tech.html

 

[pedro]

On Mon, 12 Dec 2016 18:35:03 +0000 (UTC), root <NoEMail@home.org>
wrote:

It seems to me tht the charging circuits in the laptops
are smart enough to leave the chargers plugged in all
the time.

The *chargers* generally are. See Chris' reply for what the battery
packs actually think of it.

 

On Mon, 12 Dec 2016 10:38:29 -0800, John Robertson <spam@flippers.com>
wrote:

I would appreciate comments from anyone who has adopted
a similar charging strategy.

Thanks.


I leave all my laptops plugged in when in use and tend to get batteries
that last five or more years. Obviously they are used from time to time
on batteries, but we mostly use these in our shop as semi-desktop
machines that are portable. I take mine home every night for example,
the rest are left wherever the staff last used them (cable locks).

John :-#)#

I used to leave my Thinkpad T43 plugged in all the time. I used the
computer maybe twice a month. I had used it in my car and it was working
fine. I got home, plugged it in, and a gr days later I turned it on. The
computer refused to turn on both with battery and AC power. The power
module was working. I replaced the coin cell in the computer, it still
did not turn on. I tested the hard drive in another computer, that was
fine.

I thought about it, and recall we had a bad lightning storm on between
the last time I used the computer and the time it refused to start.
Apparently lightning fryed the motherboard.

I'm not equipped to repair this sort of thing, and being an older
computer, I simply bought an identical model on ebay for about $40.
I was able to use the power converter, battery, hard drive, and CD drive
from the old computer in the new one. I did have to reinstall Windows XP
though. Swapping the old HDD simply would not boot. I was told that has
soemthing to do with the activation for XP. But I did not lose any data,
all of that was fine on the old HDD, I just had to copy it to a flash
drive (using another computer), and put it on the new laptop.

I wont be leaving my laptops plugged in all the time anymore. Especially
during the seasons when we have electrical storms.