Laptop Battery Care (1 Viewer)

[Adam Sanchez]

Hey all. Need some input on something.

I have a year and a half old Dell Inspiron 8100. I just got a new Battery for it, which is a 4460MaH and better than the original one I had. I want to make this new battery last as long as possible and I wanted some opinions on care ideas I have heard.

One is that if I use the battery to say 80% and then get home and charge it back up, that's bad for the battery? I was told to use the battery completely everytime. But that isnt often convientant for me. If I use the battery halfway down, I want to charge it up to full for the next day like when I have school a few times a week. What's the real story on doing this? I'm just looking for a way to make this new battery life last as long as I can... they are very expensive.

Also, the reason I bought this new one was obviously because my old one was going out. It can't even hold a half hour charge.... however, last night for fun I had both batteries in the bays and it looks like the system is setup to slowly pull power from BOTH and as a result the old battery is lasting ALOT longer. So it seems that by buying a new battery, it extended the life of my old one. That suits me just fine.

 

[VinhT]

I think that old notion of only recharging when the battery is completely drained is reserved for Nickel Metal-Hydride batteries. Lithium-Ion batteries don't have a memory and therefore can be recharged in any state.

 

[John*Jones]

Here are a few links that may be useful:

http://www.buchmann.ca/Chap10-page6.asp
http://www.buchmann.ca/Chap15-page2.asp


hope this helps,

john

 

[Tekara]

ni-cad batteries are about the only ones with "memory" actually what it is is when you recharge the battery partially the materials inside the battery start to form crystal which won't give up a charge.

Lithium batteries don't really have this problem so don't worry to much about it.