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Posted by Andy Fish on January 24, 2008, 8:32 am
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Hi,
I've just got a shiny new dell vostro 1700 (it's lovely by the way). Most of
the time I use it plugged into the mains, and only on battery for short
periods but obviously i would like to maintain the battery in the best
condition
from what I can tell, it's a bad idea to run it on the mains all the time
unless the battery is removed (which I don't want to get into). so therefore
I could presumably maximise the battery life when i'm in the office by
running it on batteries for a while, then turning on the mains power until
it charges up to nearly 100%, then using it on batteries until it gets low
again and so on.
is this true? anyone tried it?
if this idea really works, presumably it would be possible to write a piece
of software which worked a bit like a thermostat enabling and disabling the
mains input to keep the battery charge always between (say) 70 and 90%.
any thoughts?
Andy
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Posted by John Doue on January 24, 2008, 8:44 am
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Andy Fish wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've just got a shiny new dell vostro 1700 (it's lovely by the way). Most of
> the time I use it plugged into the mains, and only on battery for short
> periods but obviously i would like to maintain the battery in the best
> condition
>
> from what I can tell, it's a bad idea to run it on the mains all the time
> unless the battery is removed (which I don't want to get into). so therefore
> I could presumably maximise the battery life when i'm in the office by
> running it on batteries for a while, then turning on the mains power until
> it charges up to nearly 100%, then using it on batteries until it gets low
> again and so on.
>
> is this true? anyone tried it?
>
> if this idea really works, presumably it would be possible to write a piece
> of software which worked a bit like a thermostat enabling and disabling the
> mains input to keep the battery charge always between (say) 70 and 90%.
>
> any thoughts?
>
> Andy
>
>
>
You will get myriads of theories about battery life. IMHO, whatever you
do makes little difference. Unless you can keep the battery out of the
machine for extended periods of time, chances are at the end of the day,
the main difference will be in terms of nuisance you are creating for
yourself.
Enjoy your machine.
--
John Doue
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Posted by gary_hendricks_mail on January 24, 2008, 10:31 am
Please log in for more thread options Hi Andy,
Yes you are absolutely right. I run my Thinkpad X61 on the AC without
the battery connected.
If I'm on the road I just use the battery without the mains connected.
The key thing you want to avoid (esp. with Lithium ion batteries) is
to connect / overcharge the battery when it is already fully charged.
Hope this helps. If you want more information on laptop battery life,
there are some good tips which I recently blurbed on my website. Here
they are:
Tip 1: Power Down the Display
Do you know one of the most effective ways to conserve laptop battery
life is to lower the brightness of the screen display? Its been known
that lowering one level of screen brightness will yield up to 10 more
minutes of battery life. You can easily do this by going to Start >
Settings > Control Panel > Display and clicking the Settings tab. You
can also disable those cool effects like ClearType fonts and fade
effects to reduce the CPU's power consumption.
Tip 2: Turn Off Unused Devices
And here's another tip for you. As you may know, many modern laptops
have a Wi-Fi built in. Unknown to many people, that Wi-Fi connection
is a power guzzler! Make sure you turn off the Wi-Fi connection using
the external Wi-Fi on-off switch. If your laptop does not offer such a
switch, you should go to the Control Panel > System > Hardware >
Device Manager and disable the infrared transceiver, Ethernet adapter
and Bluetooth radio.
Tip 3: Decrease Hard Drive Activity
Your laptop hard drive is another power eating culprit. To save power,
you should reduce the frequency with which your hard disk has to spin.
To do this, you can try defragmenting your hard drive regularly. This
can be done using the Disk Degfragmenter in the Start > Programs >
Accessories > System Tools menu.
You can also optimize the Windows' paging file - the area of the
laptop hard drive that serves as virtual memory whenever your RAM is
full. Optimizing the paging file size ensures your hard drive is
accessed less frequently when you run out of system memory. To change
it, go to the Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance
Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory Change. Set both the initial and
maximum paging file size to 1.5 times the capacity of your installed
RAM size.
Tip 4: Disable Startup Items
Here's another tip. Disable your unneeded startup items! I find it
very irritating whenever my laptop boots up and I've to wait like 20
seconds for all manner of little program bits to load into memory. You
can disable those startup programs. Go to the associated programs and
click on the Options or Preferences menu to do this. You can also go
to the Startup tab in your Start Menu and clear programs you don't
want to run at boot time.
Tip 5: Condition the Battery
One thing you should remember about laptop batteries. You need to
condition it. When you first buy your laptop, charge the battery to
100 percent and then discharge it completely. Next, charge it to 100
percent again. This is not a pointless exercise - it 'conditions' the
battery and helps it remember exactly how much electrical charge it
can hold. After you do that, you will never need to completely
discharge the battery again.
Best Regards,
Gary Hendricks
http://www.best-laptop-guide.com
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Posted by Joel Koltner on January 24, 2008, 8:22 pm
Please log in for more thread options In general these are good tips, but...
> Tip 5: Condition the Battery
> One thing you should remember about laptop batteries. You need to
> condition it. When you first buy your laptop, charge the battery to
> 100 percent and then discharge it completely. Next, charge it to 100
> percent again.
...if this really helped the battery, I suspect the battery or laptop
manufacturer would do it themselves, don't you think?
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Posted by Val on January 24, 2008, 9:55 pm
Please log in for more thread options Better still, look for your laptop's "battery calibration" feature - usually
in the BIOS setup or accessable by some function key at bootup. Do this
once right away, then maybe again in a year or so if you feel the battery
meter is not giving an accurate report of remaining charge.
LiOn batteries don't need "conditioning" - that's a holdover from NiMh and
NiCd batteries, which do need periodic deep discharge. But that's a whole
'nuther thread.
> Tip 5: Condition the Battery
> One thing you should remember about laptop batteries. You need to
> condition it. When you first buy your laptop, charge the battery to
> 100 percent and then discharge it completely. Next, charge it to 100
> percent again.
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