Leave battery in laptop while plugged in?

[Syringer]

If I'm going to be immobilized for say 8-10 hours at work or whatever, would leaving the battery out help preserve it?

 

[C1]

Not sure if I fully understand what you're asking. What's the big deal with just turning off you're computer?

 

[corkyg]

I u7nderstand your question. It is debatable, but, I remove my laptop battery when it will be used for an extended period of time on A/C only - i.e., at home between trips. All the research I have done indicates that this will save battery life over a long period.

 

[thescreensavers]

I leave in in, I got 2 good years out of my battery and I never cared about it. Replacement cost 40 bucks.

 

[sivart]

I leave my battery in, too. I have a 5 year old laptop and the original extended battery still holds 85% of it's original charge. I call that acceptable after 5 years.

 

[wirednuts]

its not doing anything if you take it out at 100% charge. itll just eat itself away just the same as if it was in the laptop.

to protect it during storage, drain the battery to 40% and keep the battery in a cool but not cold place.

if you are just leaving the battery out for 8 hours or so, its not going to have much effect, and if you drain the battery to 40% each day before you leave for work then youre stressing the battery through constant discharging/recharging.

thats why in real world it doesnt make much difference. just leave the battery in unless you plan on storing the battery for weeks+ at a time.

 

[corkyg]

". . . thats why in real world it doesnt make much difference. just leave the battery in unless you plan on storing the battery for weeks+ at a time. "

Exactly my scenario. I only use the laptop battery about once every 2-3 months. More frequent use at home is by A/C only, battery removed and stored as stated at about 40-50%. Common sense rules, and like all rules, there are always exceptions.

 

[C1]

Yep, that's pretty much the way I handle it. (When you order a new battery, you should notice that it comes charged at about 50% level.)

The exception is when I run my big video jobs. For these, the machine runs continuous for several days and can heat up quite a bit. In such case I like to remove the battery because the open air space aids cooling as well as limits prolonged battery exposure to heat. Also, I swear (albeit based just on feel) that the power brick feels a touch cooler when running with the battery out.

 

[SZLiao214]

I always left it in in my dell vostro 1700. 2 years later the battery only last 30 mins down from 2.5 hours.

I used my notebook a lot for streaming video when i was doing other things on my desktop.

 

[corkyg]

This afternoon I got a phone call from a friend - his laptop would not turn on - nothing. I decided to make a house call.

When I got there, I disconnected all cables and accessories and pressed the power button - battery only. Nothing! Stone dead.

I removed the battery, put it on A/C power and it booted right up. I handed him the battery and said "get a new one." It was only about a year old (H-P). I further suggested he now put it in, but keep it for mobile mode only. That is rare. He uses it 90% of the time as a desktop.

 

[wirednuts]

yeah a lot of people leave their laptops in one spot for months at a time, and in those cases you could remove the battery and extend its overall life

i still never do though, since you lose the "ups" function of the laptop. its too easy to pull the power plug out. i just buy cheap batteries and risk my house burning down🙂

 

[wirednuts]

This afternoon I got a phone call from a friend - his laptop would not turn on - nothing. I decided to make a house call.

When I got there, I disconnected all cables and accessories and pressed the power button - battery only. Nothing! Stone dead.

I removed the battery, put it on A/C power and it booted right up. I handed him the battery and said "get a new one." It was only about a year old (H-P). I further suggested he now put it in, but keep it for mobile mode only. That is rare. He uses it 90% of the time as a desktop.

it could be hundreds of factors. batteries these days have intelligent circuits built in that record all activity throughout the batterys life. if you sent in the battery for warranty, they can read the flash and determine if the battery was ever overcharged, severly discharged, frozon, overheated, shorted... on and on. the circuits also have dozens of fail-safe 'fuse circuits' that will completely disable the batterypack when one of those alarms are tripped.

thats why laptop batteries just suddenly die completely flat, no juice at all. something happened to the battery that set off one of the self-destruct signals. a lot of times you can open the pack up and use the cells for other things like flashlights, because they still have a lot of life left in them.... but of course its not recommended to do that sort of thing.

 

[WackyDan]

Bah... Use the OEM's power manager to set charge thresholds... ie; I have mine set to not charge until below 50% charge, and not to charge over 98%... Been rocking the same battery for almost 3 years. It has kept my charge cycles down. Sure the battery doesn't hold as much as when it was new, but I'm betting it is about 50% better than if I didn't set charge thresholds.

Leave the battery in. No harm.

 

[corkyg]

And, conversely - take the battery out - no harm. Looks like a simple matter of personal preference. 🙂

 

[fleshconsumed]

Yes, you will get longer life out of battery if you discharge it to about half capacity and store it in a cool place. Mostly because your laptop doesn't top it off every time it drops below 95 percent and because it doesn't get warm from the heat dissipated by laptop.

Some people (if you read notebookreview forums) will actually take out the battery and put in in the fridge if they do not use it. I think that's an overkill, but it's their laptop, so more power to them.

In the end it boils down to a personal choice. Yes, you will get longer life if you take the battery out of your laptop, so if you only use your laptop on battery power once a month or so, then it does make sense to take it out if you're really worried about battery staying fresh. If you intend on taking it out every single day while you're at work or home, that's a different matter. I wouldn't do that, too much hassle. Personally I use my laptop on battery power at least once or twice a week so I never take the battery out. Yes, it will degrade faster, but it's just too inconvenient to unplug it and plug it back in so often. I think stories of batteries dying within a year are overblown. Yes, there are flukes and defective batteries and whatnot, but they are an exception. We've had a lot of laptops between me, my family, and friends, and while all of them lost capacity over a couple of years all still had plenty of life left in them. The worst example that I can think of is first generation unibody macbook pro that had battery degrade in half over less than two years. I think that's because they run too hot which ruins the battery quicker and because that particular laptop had unusually high power draw in sleep mode which forced lots of unnecessary discharge/recharge cycles. Even so that is an exception and it still gets at least two hours of battery life.

 

[Syringer]

Yeah I use my laptop for 9-10 hours a day at work, will carry it into meetings at most once/twice a day, and then take it up where it'll be plugged in most of the time.

Not a huge inconvenience to detach it but was wondering if it's worth the effort.

 

[C1]

I think rechargeable batteries like to be used a bit. Neither conventional lead acid nor Li-ion batteries cotton to deep cycle discharge. So Discharge to 40% is probably okay. What's the big deal in the overall scheme anyways if the battery degrades to 50% capacity in 3 yrs versus 3.5 yrs. Batteries are like car brakes, they wear out with use. In fact they're even worse - they degrade just sitting on a shelf.

 

[thescreensavers]

This afternoon I got a phone call from a friend - his laptop would not turn on - nothing. I decided to make a house call.

When I got there, I disconnected all cables and accessories and pressed the power button - battery only. Nothing! Stone dead.

I removed the battery, put it on A/C power and it booted right up. I handed him the battery and said "get a new one." It was only about a year old (H-P). I further suggested he now put it in, but keep it for mobile mode only. That is rare. He uses it 90% of the time as a desktop.

I been noticing that. But isnt Lithium ion half life 3 years. So that means that battery might of been sitting on a shelf for a long time?

 

[Brainonska511]

I never bothered taking it out. The battery on my current laptop runs along the back and helps to give it the proper balance for sitting on a desk. Plus, I sometimes just wander around my apartment or where ever and don't always take the adapter around. It would be pretty annoying to constantly dig the battery out, charge it, then do my wandering...

In my 4.5 year old laptop, I still get about an hour of web-browsing (originally was ~4.5 hours).

 

[joetekubi]

If you google extend lithium-ion batteries you will find many links.
Here's the best info I've found:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/tools/science-of-battery-life-in-electronics

Summary (if I can state it correctly),
The worst thing to do is to have your battery always charged 80-90%, and then recharged. Let it run down to 30-40% or so before recharging, and every once in a while let it run down to 0% (leave it at the bios screen w/o an os running), then recharge to 100%.

Hope I stated it correctly. The article is a bit clearer.

 

[WackyDan]

And, conversely - take the battery out - no harm. Looks like a simple matter of personal preference. 🙂

Corky... as a fellow Lenovo fan... I like you... But as a former field engineer on said product, I have to say that taking the battery out is overkill. If we were talking about the NiMH batteries of years past, you would be right. Lithium batteries do not present the same challenges, especially when you set charge thresholds.

 

[WackyDan]

I been noticing that. But isnt Lithium ion half life 3 years. So that means that battery might of been sitting on a shelf for a long time?

We had a customer that bought a large quantity of spare batteries for their laptops. Literally bought 1 for every laptop. The logic was that they could get funding for the purchase easier if bought at the same time as all the laptops. If they needed to purchases batteries a couple of years later, it was harder to get funds for something that was considered an expense versus a capital investment.

They complained when a year+ later they started to use some of the reserve batteries and found that they had chemically degraded just sitting there in storage, in their brand new never opened boxes. Some were even toast. This was a public k-12 school with an intended four year life cycle on the systems. They would have saved a lot of $$$ by keeping a small # of spares on hand and finding a way to make a larger battery purchase/swap at the two year point in the system lease.

Oh... I have stories.

 

[Muse]

Almost never. Only if I'm trying to increase current capacity to get it in a range where it will degrade more slowly (i.e. 40-50% capacity). Once it reaches that capacity (unless I'm going to use the machine off site with the battery), I remove the battery, and if I don't expect to need the battery for a while, it goes in the refrigerator. Leaving a battery in an AC powered laptop (without thresholds) is a good way to degrade it faster than necessary. If you need to use it with the battery a lot, then set charging thresholds, as suggested here.

 

[Muse]

-snip- Yes, it will degrade faster, but it's just too inconvenient to unplug it and plug it back in so often. I think stories of batteries dying within a year are overblown. -snip-

I have two batteries, same spec for Lenovo Thinkpads:

Battery 1: Came with my T60 bought 4 years ago, treated well, tried to keep it around 40% charged and in the refrigerator (however, once in the refrigerator, I generally ignore it for months!). It has around 25 cycles on it, used in the machine occasionally.

Battery 2: Came with the T61 I bought used a few months ago. Its date of manufacture is less than a year ago. It has close to 40 cycles on it, and since I bought the machine used I can only guess at the users' usage patterns. I have to suppose it was left in the machine.

Battery 2 is "good" but Battery 1 is better, significantly better in terms of capacity. I have to believe that my strategy to prolong battery life is working and working well. 😎

 

[Muse]

-snip - and every once in a while let it run down to 0% (leave it at the bios screen w/o an os running), then recharge to 100%.

Hope I stated it correctly. The article is a bit clearer.

The reason for complete discharge followed by complete charge on occasion is to reset the capacity indicator setting to reestablish its accuracy. It has nothing to do with extending the life of the battery.