Sony batteries

[Loose rivets]

I have an old Vaio that is at least five years old. The batteries (2) were obtained within weeks of new. This trip home they're both useless, whereas last summer they were fine. They have had little use as power for the machine, and I can't believe they'd both have such similar characteristics. Are they programmed to kill themselves? And if so, is there any utility to fool them into going again?

The only difference this year is I didn't take the laptop back to the US, so they've had a holiday which my be the cause.

N.B. These batteries discharged themselves at 15% per day - or maybe it was 5%. More accurately, the computer discharged them, as they were fine if removed. I complained bitterly about this and that's how I got the spare battery. They were of course removed while I was away.

[dazdaz1]

Batts are cool if one knows how to treat them. W7 F2 at boot up, go with 80% batt charge.

[Loose rivets]

But the point is, do they have a programed life, say, hours or number of cycles? Your point about taking care of them is good advice, but would profit you none if they were ordered to appear bereft of life.

[jolihokistix]

My Sony Vaio laptop is about seven or eight years old. The batteries died years ago, dead as a Dodo, so I only use it plugged in to the mains. The body gets pretty dang hot sometimes, and the fan emits various alarming noises...

[Loose rivets]

Oh . . . see my thread on the newer Vaio fan problems. I seem to have made it run to a temperature that 'Core Temp' thinks is normal, but now this morning, I've got a noisy hard drive.

If it fails, that'll be the third one in quick succession.

[jimjim1]

I am not an expert on batteries however I have a view on this.

Rechargable lithium batteries last about 1000 cycles. However, what is a cycle?

It appears that it might be a discharge/charge event. Even a small discharge will 'cycle' the battery. This is not a "counter" but a result of the chemistry.

There is a rumour that sometimes fully discharging and fully charging Li batteries two or three times may help. This may be because they all have an internal computer which monitors the charge state. This may recalibrate the computer.

I find that old laptop batteries are always dead.

New ones are cheap enough on amazon/ebay. Buy from someone with lots of good reviews on the performance of the batteries.

I use a laptop mostly at home and I don't know what to do really. I decided to try keeping it plugged in ALL the time. If I unplug it for any reason I try to allow it to discharge a fair bit.

If I could be bothered I would take the battery out and use it without the battery only installing the battery when I wanted to use it.

I will try to check out the cryptic "press F2" message above. Sounds very interesting but a quick google produces no satisfying results except possibly for HP. Ideally I would like the laptop to NEVER charge the battery unless it was below say 80%. This would be really good.

PS
Don't leave the laptop "sleeping" unless you want to. This drains (and of course may cycle) the battery.

Find out the difference between:

- shutdown
- hibernate - system status stored on hard disk - no power use
- sleep - system status stored in RAM - power use

I know someone who uses his laptop once a week or so. Shuts the lid when finished.

On every start battery is flat (and cycled) and system has to do "improper shutdown" recovery. Unfortunately using a computer is "too complicated" and loud shouting immediately results if it is offered that there might be a better way. I will try to fix it silently one day by setting lid close action to be hibernate, or maybe shutdown.

[Saab Dastard]

Hibernate still draws some power - it's not the same as shutdown - but much less than sleep.

SD

[Booglebox]

Is it a genuine Sony battery or a 3rd-party / eBay part?
I've used both OEM and knockoff batteries and there is a big, big, big difference in how long they are useful for. In my experience, non-OEM batteries are crap after 18 months max. of normal use.
So, you get what you pay for.
Also, if it's been sitting in storage for more than a couple of months, this may also damage it. I've seen this a couple of times - most recently, a battery with 50 cycles that hadn't been used for a year, held only 50% of capacity!

If it's a Sony battery, you could try to "reset" it using some sort of built-in tool (in the Lenovo world it's called "power manager"). This discharges it, recharges it, and then resets the guage.

Regarding planned obsolence, as you may be aware every Li-tech battery (Li-po, Li-ion) is a potential explosive device, that is carefully controlled by it's circuitry. Recent developments in said circuitry / firmware have yielded good results e.g. rapid charging. Also, your Li-ion battery should be good for ~300 cycles before it drops to ~60-70% of max capacity, if you look after it - not 1000 as stated above.

[Loose rivets]

The batteries on my older Vaio are both Sony. I'll dig that machine out tomorrow and delve into some of the Sony hidden software I've just discovered on the newer one I'm using. This 16" machine gobbles power, but does mean I don't have to dig out my LG monitor while I'm a guest in someone's house.

See t'other thread re gaining control of colour and auto brightness. I've cut this one back to 80% charge to prolong life. Rated by the self test at Good, but not excellent. It'll be interesting to see what such a test (if I can find it) says on the old machine.

[ExSp33db1rd]

I decided to try keeping it plugged in ALL the time. If I unplug it for any reason I try to allow it to discharge a fair bit.

I do that, not because I'm particularly clever, it just seems easier, i.e. when in doubt, do nowt, and so far my battery has been going for about year. As it is plugged in, there doesn't seem to be much point in changing from Sleep to Hibernate - to me at least.

If I could be bothered I would take the battery out and use it without the battery only installing the battery when I wanted to use it.

I used to do that, then was chastised by my Man Wot Does on the grounds that when we get one of our very frequent power cuts in rural NZ, I would lose all that I was working on at the time, whereas currently when the mains current fails the battery current keeps things going, I then disconnect to avoid some 500 volts going through the system - once lost a fax machine like that. ( I know, I could use one of those controller thingies, but not on the whole house, so I just go around switching things off, except in the middle of the night, when I subsequently wake up to lots of blinking digits and little lights around the place.)

Point is, like many things in Life, ask 2 people and get 5 answers, and having tried many battery tricks, keeping it permanently plugged in seems to be working OK.

For now !