How do you extend the life of a laptop battery?

netadict said:

well?

The answer seems to be that there are no tried and true methods of extending the life of laptop batteries. After all someone has to keep the manufacturers in business. Some schools of thought on lifetime of batteries say keep them always charged or plugged into a charger.

Back in the olden days, the charge level of batteries (and life) would decrease if you did not completely discharge them occasionally. but the newer batteries seem to not obey that rule.

I keep my laptop plugged in all the time and have had at least 3 years of life in each of them.

But of course you have entered "how to extend battery life" in google???

Rich

A friend here in W7Forum said for me to charge my battery fully.. then run it totall down..
re-charge it fully... then remove from my laptop , insert into a new freezer type plastic baggie..
securely close it, put in the Ref... every 3 or 4 months remove if from the Ref.. insert into my laptop .. run it down, go through the steps again, as above. So far this is working well for mine.

Keeping it charged up will extend the life. Running the battery down often will shorten the life.
Also, it doesn't matter how you store the battery, it will eventually start to degrade significantly around 3 years after its manufacture.

netadict said:

Thank you for all your replies

I was also under the impression that it was god for the battery to completely discharge it every now and then to prevent "memory" from happening.

Now I'm beginning to think "do what you want with it because you will have to replace it after 3 or 4 years anyways"

3 or 4 years is pretty good anyway, but I know folks that end up replacing a battery after less than 2 years, sometimes much sooner.

Might want to check out that link I posted if you're really interested in prolonging the life of your lithium ion batteries. You may find that you replace the device long before ever having to replace the battery. I've got a laptop from 2005 and a handheld device from 2001 with original batteries, and both get decent runtime (although the 2001 device only gets about 50% original runtime, and it's now a kid's toy).

And by the way, the "memory" you refer to was correct for older nickel cadmium technology. You rarely find those nowadays though. Nickel metal hydride was much more resistant to that memory effect. But discharging degrades the heck out of lithium ion batteries. The only reason to ever allow it is if you want to recalibrate the "fuel gauge" (the reported time remaining or precent charge).

If the charging mechanism for the device/battery cannot properly recognize full charge, periodically trickling juice to "top off", don't practice leaving it on the charger much longer than necessary (they don't like high voltage either).

And remember that heat is one of the biggest killers.

All my opinion of course, but I've had good luck. I've only ever replaced one lithium ion battery. 7 years old. Lucky to get it super cheap ($3 instead of the original $60) otherwise that device would've been disposed of before it actually failed. Apparently they over manufactured that part number.

F5ing.. thanks for the link and info. I'll keep the link for use when needed. Thanks:)