Laptop batteries

[Binoculars]

Have today taken delivery of my first laptop. (Hate the keyboard, hate the pointer; will be connecting mouse and keyboard asap, which is a bit like having contact lenses with frames, but I digress....)

Funnily enough, the instruction manual, while big on t4elling me where the start button is, rather sadly lacks information on the one piece of apparatus with which I am unfamiliar in my desktop experience; to wit, the battery.

It strongly recommends that I let the battery exhaust itself before recharging, which seems odd. The old days of those nickel thingies which developed a memory which was never mentioned in the instruction manual are gone, surely? This piece of equipment, while at the very low end of the scale pricewise, does possess a LithiumIon battery, so do I need to take into account their warning? In particular, do I need to take the battery out every time I use mains power, or can I just leave it in safe in the knowledge that it will cheerfully recharge to 100% while I use AC power?

Signed,

Confused

P.S. I don't believe in electrons, so don't get too techo here......

[Cornish Jack]

Binos
If it's a Li/on battery, it doesn't suffer from 'memory' and there should be no problems with partial charge/discharging. I have two laptops, both with Li/on batteries and have never bothered to fully discharge either. Plug 'em in when I'm near the mains, otherwise run 'em on battery until they warn of low charge. The handy thing is that they warn you BEFORE they go flat so you can save and switch off. You can check battery state, of course, by hovering the mouse pointer over the battery icon on the task bar which should show % remaining. Enjoy. :)

[Binoculars]

Bingo! Not just an answer, but the answer I wanted! Thanks CJ.

;)

[Dan Kelly]

Hang in there. When I first obtained a laptop I didn't like the keyboard much, though the touchpad mouse device was quite good.

As I didn't have another keboard or mouse ot fit I perservered and after a short time found both to be easy to operate and wouldn't revert to plug ins.

Cheers,
Dan

[Binoculars]

Gday Dan. I may reluctantly come to terms with the keyboard, though it doesn't help fat fingered typists like me, but that bloody pointer thing is a pain, and since a mouse fits easily in the case, that's how it's going to be for me for ever. :D

[pa42]

Have been on rechargeable-battery laptops since 1984 (sic: that's 19 yrs).

I believe my grey hair results from those &%^$#@! batteries.

Haven't seen one that lasted longer than 9 months to a year. Now have 3 laptops (mobile RV/cruising sailboat lifestyle), all of which die instantly when removed from mains power.

The Most Useful one is a 1993 that runs on 12v from the mains; hence (with a little soldering) I can operate it in boat or RV from the prime battery. The others can operate off a converter to 110 (wires, wires everywhere!).

New batteries? Ha! Cost more than the computer is worth after a few years.

The worst part of the manufacturing scam is that the sole protection against mains power surges seems to be having the battery in its bay. So I end up lugging the 2# dead battery around for years just because of planned obsolescence!!

[SLF]

Whilst I can't quite claim the length of use of pa42 (that must have been an Osbourne 1, "laptop" I think not!), my experience is that both types of batteries in common use on laptops (cheap Nickel Metal Hydride and better Lithium Ion) survive a limited number of recharges, and rather than use say 25% and then top them back up, they're better discharged down to 10% and then fully recharged.

Memory effect was limited to older Nickel CAdmium units as far as I know.

In the small print, I expect you'll find that the usual 1 year laptop warranty does not apply to the battery. My current Sony Vaio's first one lasted about 9 months.

Cheers - SLF