Laptop Batteries

I killed the battery on my old laptop by using it plugged in only for at least a year without ever unplugging it. Lesson learned.

So with this laptop – which I use in the office 10 hrs a day/5 days a week – I use it unplugged from time to time (maybe for 3 hours once or twice a week) in the hopes of not killing it. And, every month or two when I bring it home or on the road with me I’ll also used it unplugged for an hour here and there. Is my present routine sufficient to preserve the battery life?

Related question: when one considers all the incredible technologies in the world and all the vast monetary incentive to constantly develop better and better technologies, batteries are apparently one archaic technology for which people have had great difficulty figuring how to make improvements, wouldn’t you agree? They’re big, they’re heavy, they have short lives, etc. What’s the deal? Why can’t someone invent a better (not incrementally better, but fundamentally better) battery?

[quote=“Mother Theresa”]I killed the battery on my old laptop by using it plugged in only for at least a year without ever unplugging it. Lesson learned.

So with this laptop – which I use in the office 10 hrs a day/5 days a week – I use it unplugged from time to time (maybe for 3 hours once or twice a week) in the hopes of not killing it. And, every month or two when I bring it home or on the road with me I’ll also used it unplugged for an hour here and there. Is my present routine sufficient to preserve the battery life?

Related question: when one considers all the incredible technologies in the world and all the vast monetary incentive to constantly develop better and better technologies, batteries are apparently one archaic technology for which people have had great difficulty figuring how to make improvements, wouldn’t you agree? They’re big, they’re heavy, they have short lives, etc. What’s the deal? Why can’t someone invent a better (not incrementally better, but fundamentally better) battery?[/quote]

I hear using battery once every 2 weeks is good enough. It is also good to completely use up the battery and drain it before you recharge it fully. If you are going to use it plugged in for a long time take the battery out.

I move around alot in my place with my laptop so I keep the battery plugged in. I expect it to start to die out soon. I will probably get a replacement from dell when I get back to the States.

If you say heavy I say VRLA (Valve Regulated Lead Acid) battery. I have just been working on a small project where I looked into the different types, and the VRLA would weight about 3x compared to a Li-Ion battery with the same voltage & capacity (actually the Li-Ion has a slightly higher capacity). New laptops should have Li-Ion, or at least Ni-MH batteries (the latter being around 50% heavier than Li-Ion).

Batteries actually have significantly improved over the years, one of the latest types is Lithium-Polymer, they are lighter and can be easily shaped even. Being fairly new, they are also very expensive.
However all technologies have their pro and cons and thus areas of application are often limited, beside the cost-factor of course.

I think someone tried to overcharge a lithium poly battery one time and it burst into flame. Those batteries can be a fire hazard. I found these AA batteries that behaves like Lithium ion in a sense that they don’t lose charge as fast as normal NiMh AA batteries. I will have to see… they claim they can be stored for 6 months and only lose 20% of the charge, so they can actually be used right out of the box just like normal dry cell or Alkaline battery.

I heard that lithium ion can’t be made in AAA/AA/C/D size because they are very sensitive to overcharge or undercharge that if they were drained in the wrong way they would explode. Devices that uses them has to have some kind of constant voltage monitoring thing that would shut off the device when the voltage reaches a certain limit and chargers are like that as well.

What makes you say that?

youtube.com/watch?v=z3o_2mwRPdw
youtube.com/watch?v=vE532lRT3kw
youtube.com/watch?v=4OsBc8RqSKU

:wink:

Actually Li-Ion are also known to burn / explode, that’s why they have a protection circuit build-in (or at least should have). I think Sony recently recalled some of their laptop batteries due to risk of fire.

Sanyo Eneloop?