Re: Battery life recovery - Everyone suggesting battery full drains, *read this*
On Thu, 2003-02-13 at 20:05, mi wrote:
> Hello Joe.
>
> Thanks for your enduring efforts !
>
> > - Store it at 40% charge. Not 100%.
> > - Don't leave it in the laptop while it's in mains power.
> > - Don't store it anywhere particularly hot or cold or wet.
>
> Does this mean it'd be best to stop working at 40 % ?
> Never use up the battery's capability, except on emergency ?
> Wouldn't the manufactorers 'cycle span' somehow have to be seen more
> differentiated, then ?
Really what it means is that Li-Ion batteries actually support the
typical usage patterns of laptop batteries a lot better than NiCd or
NiMH.
For myself I know that most use of my laptop is for long periods, so I
leave it plugged in. If I need it on battery it's fully charged and it
actually lasts more than a couple of hours.
(A) The 40% charge thing is for _storage_ not for when you're using your
laptop (unless you only use the battery when you travel, or something
like that).
(B) Correct. Charge your battery when you can - the deeper the
discharge cycle the worse it is for Li-Ion.
(C) I have no idea what this means. Standards or terms invented to
describe long-term behaviour of NiCd batteries don't necessarily apply
to Li-Ion.
And, for an amusing completely off-topic side note:
In a previous career I used to be an electronics technician and one job
we had was to rejuvenate NiCd batteries for airport security radios.
There are two failure modes for NiCd - one is charge memory, which
everyone is familiar with, and the other is that tiny threads of nickel
grow between anode and cathode, at which point you get a short circuit.
Making these batteries work again was _really_ fun. We would charge up
a huuuugggeee bank of capacitors to 100V and ZAP!!! Quite often this
would fuse the nickel threads inside the battery, and it would once more
take a charge :-)
Cheers,
Andrew.
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