Laptop Battery Question.....

[BRL]

Hi all. I heard only today that a laptop battery can wear out or possibly break if you use it the wrong way i.e. keeping it on mains supply and hardly using it off the mains.
So, what are the common myths about these batteries? Are they really not that good or is it just rubbish I heard today?
Cheers!

[drauk]

Older rechargeable battery technologies, like NiCad did suffer from a memory effect whereby if they weren't fully discharged before being recharged they would begin to lose their capacity. However, most laptops these days have Lithium Ion batteries which do not exhibit this characteristic.

Even modern batteries do however have a lifetime related to the number of charging cycles they go through. Once the battery has been charged and discharged a certain number of times (typically a few hundred) its ability to perform deteriorates and you'll notice it as decreased battery life. Replacing laptop batteries is shockingly expensive.

[BLUE SKY THINKER]

Some additional, related info. in the second half of this fairly recent topic.

[yintsinmerite]

I bought a new vaio laptop battery from a company on ebay (it was a copy), and it was somewhere like 30% of the cost of a genuine part. It did of course go wrong, but when I complained they did a no quibble exchange which seems to have done the trick. I can PM you his details if its any use to you.