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- rm999, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11"What the hell did I do wrong?"
Not much, rechargeable batteries simply lose some of their charge over time and recharges. Just buy a new one. - Jakesterama, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11GAH!!! More people spreading lies about lithium-ion batteries, based on hearsay and wife's-tales
/*The straight facts -
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
"A lithium-ion battery provides 300-500 discharge/charge cycles. The battery prefers a partial rather than a full discharge. Frequent full discharges should be avoided when possible."
"Although lithium-ion is memory-free in terms of performance deterioration, batteries with fuel gauges exhibit what engineers refer to as "digital memory". Here is the reason: Short discharges with subsequent recharges do not provide the periodic calibration needed to synchronize the fuel gauge with the battery's state-of-charge. A deliberate full discharge and recharge every 30 charges corrects this problem. Letting the battery run down to the cut-off point in the equipment will do this. If ignored, the fuel gauge will become increasingly less accurate."
/*Or for a more blunt reading on the "Memory" effect in rechargeable -
http://www.dansdata.com/gz011.htm
“"Memory effect" is now used as a general term for anything that makes a battery not deliver its full capacity. What the term originally referred to, though, is a phenomenon that's probably never actually been observed in consumer hardware.”
“Batteries don't last forever. The older they get, the less capacity they have. Live with it." - PlaidPhantom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Once again, somebody thought, "Hey, let's put each paragraph on a different page to increase ad revenue!" I wish I could slap them.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14Tip #0 Buy a notebook with Centrino technology.
- Foma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Zen like"?
- justinus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The most demanding question about laptop batteries is not answered: what to do when most of the time we are on power line connection, should we just stick in the batteries and let it stay 100% fully charged all along, or is it better to take them off? When we take them off, in what level of charge should the battery have?
- thegreenbandit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Actually keeping your battery warm does make it drain faster. This gives you more juice for a shorter period of time. (The chemical reaction is sped up by heat, producing more energy but uses up the reactants faster)
Keeping the battery at room temperature is usually the best (as that's what they're designed for).
The Alaska crews have a hard time keeping their batteries warm and at full capacity. The batteries don't drain faster, they just have less juice. - merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4This article's pretty lame, lacking hard data (how about you give us some idea how many watt-hours we'll save by defragging regularly? If it's a 1% increase, then we don't care), and appears to be fairly outdated.
The laptop I'm typing this on has never paged, once. It's called "Having enough RAM". 6 years ago, paging was a fact of life, but ram prices are so low these days, there's no excuse for not having enough ram.
How about we get an article that details how to set up a RAM disk, so you don't have to use your harddrive at all? That'd be an article worth reading. - mikeazorin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I've used my iBook G4 from 100% to 30% every day, and then a full charge overnight for two years. Now my 4400mAh battery gets a max of 897mAh. That's about 20 minutes with wifi turned off, display at 10%, CPU at low, and mild CPU usage. What the hell did I do wrong?
- curupira, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If I lived on USA or Europe, I would like to try a Transmeta processor... in Brazil they are very expensive :(
- coding, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The brightness on my laptop affects battery life the most at about 5 times the effect of anything else. On my laptop I can get 2 extra hours (about 4 hours total) of battery if the brightness is turned to the lowest setting versus the setting I always use (the highest setting).
- bbrosemer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If XP sucks up CPU and Vista will probably suck up more that leads to more power consumption which leads to the obvious answer of installing Windows 2000 which has 12 processes running on Install and in the 12,000 for services running or about 80 mb ram XP has in the 200's the first time it is installed and Vista is in the 400's with 53 processes running on install.
- ppsainity, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've been using these tips on all my notebooks for quite some time (From an old PCmag article). IMHO they have always worked; increasing the length of time that I can run off my batteries.
One thing I would add that will be relevant with upcoming Vista, is disabling glass which would otherwise suck up power via the GPU and its fans. - UnderLoK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Was hoping someone already posted this...
The article sucks unless you didn't know that having 64mb of ram and running in swap space wears down your battery quicker... - deepsub, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@mikeazorin
I think maybe, too, you deeply discharged the battery too often. I never go below 50% if I can help it. - t3hX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2>Current LiIon batteries have integrated circuits regulating how many recharge cycles that are allowed.
>That's right, there's a program inside that decrements the performance of the charge.
This smells like BS. There's a program inside them that shuts off the charge once it reaches a certain level. This level is reduced as the battery gets older. - Neme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Pretty redundant article.
- brapper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've gone through 124 load cycles over 38 months and my batery has 76% of it's original capacity. I'm inclined to think that that's alright.
- inactive, on 01/21/2009, -0/+1thank you for this article. if you need discount notebook battery, you can go there.
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many kinds of batteries for your laptop with cheap price and high quality! - GreatDrok, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I got about 2 years of daily use out of my iBook G4 battery before I decided to replace it. It had been through about 500 recharge cycles and would only hold enough charge to run the machine for about 2 hours so it wasn't as bad as yours. I looked around and 500 cycles is about what you can expect from these sorts of batteries. The surprise to me was that the aftermarket batteries were more expensive than getting one directly from Apple. With the new battery the machine runs for 6 hours or so again now.
Freezing these batteries doesn't work, nor does discharging and recharging fully each time help (no memory effect) as you add a full cycle each time you do it. Sometimes you need to calibrate it as I did yesterday though by running it right down and charging fully but I doubt that is going to help much with your battery. It didn't with my old one. The best advice is where possible use the mains supply unless you are happy to accept that after a couple of years you will need to buy a replacement battery. - bigD1ZZY, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"What the hell did I do wrong?"
Not 100% sure on this, but if you throw the battery into the freezer for a few days to a week the battery will be as good as new again. But that may be nickel based batteries only. If you do get a new battery for your iBook then it's worth a try.
Also tip #5 says to keep your battery cool, as heat will drain it faster, but it is the other way around, heat will help it last, that is why all photographers keep there spare battery in there jacket close to there body, and keep switching them so they stay warm. Also, film crews in alaska and similar places have a really hard time filming as there batteries drain a lot faster there. - warrenfalk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The old HP tablets (TC1000) have 1Ghz Transmeta processors
The new HP tablets( TC1100) have 1.1Ghz Intel processors
I've owned both. The new tablets have 30% longer battery life (maybe not b/c of processor though) and run more than twice as fast.
So if it makes you feel better, you probably don't want a Transmeta processor - Joey67, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You should also not fully discharge your battery if you are going to remove it for storage. The generally accepted level your battery should be at is between 40-60% for storage.
- Hamletlere, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't know about everyone else, but here is my experience:
I have one of the original 17" Powerbooks, bought about 3 years ago. When I bought it, I could get around 4-4.5 hours of battery life (with the screen dimmed, etc.). Except for a few rare days now and then, it's been connected on AC power (I use it both at home and at work). The battery discharges slightly when it travels to and from work, and on the occasional trip, as I keep it in a sleeping state while traveling.
After three years under these conditions, I still get about 1.5-2 hours of battery life (on the rare occasion when I forget my power adapter when I go to work!). This is with the same conditions as before... screen dimmed, etc.
Based on this experience, I'd say that keeping your laptop on AC power doesn't have much of an adverse effect on the battery. - h00ligan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2thank you captain obvious
- ppsainity, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Lithium Ion batteries do have a pack control circuit (PCC) which does nothing more than protect the cells from abusive conditions such as current and voltage overcharging, high temperatures, and over-discharges; all of which can lead to explosions or burns. The circuit (if made right and not by a greedy company - ya never know otherwise) does not have a finite cycle limit. The capacity and cycle limits are determined by the constant monitoring of the cells performance by the circuit.
Over time a full discharge/recharge cycle will allow one to regain some capacity as this will recalibrate the PPC. Also some notebook manufacturers provide utilities that allow for the direct management/calibration of the battery's PPC; only some manufacturers provide such tools as there are dangers involved in using with them.
As far as storage goes...NEW batteries will last longer in the freezer provided that they are kept within stated STORAGE limits and are protected from moisture. USED batteries should be stored with a nominal 40% charge kept in a cool, moisture free environment; cool not COLD.
Now, as far as using batteries in a Notebook that is always plugged in...I can't say if it does do any damage to the cell due to heat or constant trickle charging, but common sense tells me that if I know I won't be using my battery for a while, I should store it away anyways.
All said however, batteries do eventually die. - Qdub, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"What the hell did I do wrong?"
It is expected that after a few years a laptop battery will slowly kill itself. However, I have an iBook G4 as well and I always run it down to where it forces itself to sleep. You unfortunately can't dodge the inevitable; you need a new battery, or a new laptop. Macbook? :P - Jakesterama, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1From the Battery U, it talks about heat being lithium-ion battey's worst enemy, so if your compy gets really hot when it is plugged in, it is really bad for the battery.
"The worst condition is keeping a fully charged battery at elevated temperatures, which is the case with running laptop batteries. If used on main power, the battery inside a laptop will only last for 12-18 months. I must hasten to explain that the pack does not die suddenly but begins with reduced run-times."
"Running a laptop computer on the mains has a similar temperature problem. While the battery is kept fully charged, the inside temperature during operation rises to 45°C (113°F).
Removing the battery from the laptop when running on fixed power protects the battery from heat but some battery and laptop manufacturers caution against this practice. They say that dust and moisture accumulating inside the battery casing could damage the laptop. There is little evidence of this occurring in an office environment. " - faulkner, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4try riding it down to 0%. let the battery completely die, unless that would corrupt the filesystem. [it may corrupt my NTFS drive in windows, but not my ext3 drive in gentoo.]
- bsjpark, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Cool this will save my laptop battery. =)
http://bsjpark.blogspot.com/ - ppsainity, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0The article was lacking as far as bench-marks or test data, but I believe it was more of a limited scoped good faith article; the author just wanted to give some tips without too much detail.
Personally I have found that by following such tips that I have extended the battery life of my laptops by 25% (ie 2:45 hr:mins as apposed to 2:05) The biggest saves were turning off graphical features (XP in classic desktop with performance visual settings) and disabling certain hardware (ie the IR port) when not needed. Spindle use and screen brightness are no-brainers of course. - paulwelch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0You want irony? As I clicked to load this page, a balloon popped up warning me that my battery was low.
- krindor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Decent article, nothing I didn't know.
- TheAce, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This article was mostly windows related crap without any real content, just as the magazine who published it.
For instance this reconditionthing only works with older NiCd batteries.
Current LiIon batteries have integrated circuits regulating how many recharge cycles that are allowed.
That's right, there's a program inside that decrements the performance of the charge. The reason of this is two-fold.
1. LiIon batteries are pretty unstable and letting them run free could be hazardous in the long run, causing fires and all such badness.
2. Computer manufacturers make a good profit of selling extra batteries therefore my take is that they try to find a "sweet spot" between costumer satisfaction and selling more units.
Anyway, here are some real tips of extending the battery life as long as possible. Beware cause that is all you are going to get though. There are no "magic" tricks extending your battery life.
(Of course there are tales of people resetting the charge cycle counter on their batteries but then your are utterly on your own and risk the consequences of a exploding battery.)
Here are some real tips that do save/extend your battery life-time.
#1. The most important rule: Always, always remove the battery when you don't use it. For long storage discharge it first. When you are home for instance, pop it out from its socket. Its the recharging cycles that really wear it down.
#2 When you are going mobile, skip connecting all external equipment that you don't use. Everything connected consumes power.
#3 If you are an avid Suspend-to-ram user while on battery. Switch to suspend-to-disk instead. The former drains current at all time it active.
#4 Consider buying a new battery. Hey its not that much and you don't need to bother reading articles like this anymore. - youareretarded, on 10/12/2007, -35/+4Quote: 'I've used my iBook G4 from 100% to 30% every day, and then a full charge overnight for two years. Now my 4400mAh battery gets a max of 897mAh. That's about 20 minutes with wifi turned off, display at 10%, CPU at low, and mild CPU usage. What the hell did I do wrong?"
You bought a mac.
:p
Sorry I couldn't resist!
Go ahead and mod me down now:p
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