Laptop Battery Care, What To Do?

By Author: Gürsel Batmaz
Total Articles: 570
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There are two main factors cause aging of lithium-ion batteries:

1 - All electronic machines have a lifetime, the more you use them, the quicker you exhaust them. Laptop batteries are the same. It doesn't matter how much you care, laptop batteries will lose performance by time passes.

2 - Natural aging. Even if you put laptop battery away and never use it, battery will die one day. Let me explain things a little bit more.

You have to understand that, it doesn't matter how good you care about your laptop battery, it will lose performance and one day it will die. Of course, your exploits will slow the process of aging of your battery. In warmer environments, while the laptop is used and your battery gets warm, your battery will drain energy quicker. For this reason, the number one rule is: Keep your laptop cool. Try to keep your battery in room temperature. But don't put your battery in a freezer or refrigerator. That will make your battery useless.

The second most important point is, each filling-emptying cycle (or use) of battery will reduce performance. Of course this is not surprising. However, ...
... according to the time when you compare to the first use, it will surprise you.

When users continually keep the battery pinned and connected to the electricity battery will continue to charge and discharge process. If you use a full charged battery to at previously working warm laptop, will be discharged quicker than normal. Once a predicted level charging falls (is different for each company) to provide the current laptop battery, AC adapter fills extra electricity. Laptop battery for the increasingly old, self-discharge is connected to and depending on use, will gradually increase.

Normally lithium ion batteries will perform a 600 to 800 charge/discharge cycle. This means a life between 1,5 and 3 years. As described above, when you use your laptop battery, re-filling source (AC adapter) will remain unnecessarily pinned.

As a note, most of laptop users think it is the best to fully charge the battery after fully discharged. But this case is for Nickel Cadmium (Ni-Cd) battery method. Today's batteries have different chemical reactions and have different characteristics.

The best charging method is when lithium ion batteries occupancy rate is between 10% and 20% that's the best time to be filled again, the healthy way to slower your capacity reduce. To charge battery when it is fully empty, this is an old method and a wrong belief. Windows operating system warn us to plug in adaptor when it's the best time to charge your battery (10%, 20% etc.).
Some advises for the laptop battery usage:

1 - New laptop batteries are generally offered empty. The first filling has to be as long as possible (minimum 4 hours) and do not use the battery before fully charged.

2 - If you can keep your battery cool, keep it. But that doesn't mean to put it in freezer or something like that.

3 - Don't plug in battery when you are plugged in by means of an adaptor.

4 - Don't wait for battery to be completely empty to charge again, that method was for old type batteries.

5 - If you didn't use your battery for a while, don't try to fully charge it, use it at least its occupancy rate is 10%.

6 - If you buy a backup battery, don't wait for your battery to die, because your backup battery will also die when it waits.

Gursel Batmaz is an experienced writer who works at a laptop related company. To learn more about laptop battery care take a look at Toshiba laptop site.