Mysteries of the laptop battery

So you got your shiny new notebook for back to school and your thinking to yourself, maybe I should pick up a spare battery! I'll save it in my bag for emergency use and life will be great.

Well son, I've got some tips for you!

I always get asked at work about batteries and I thought I'd share my good knowledge with you! the faithful readers.

So here we go,

Tip #1 Don't expose the battery to intense heat! if you have a laptop (esp P4 chips!) that runs extremely hot, or if a fan is failing on you, don't expose your battery to high temperatures, its best to disconnect the battery while plugged into the wall. Heat ruins batteries plain and simple, it speeds up the charge process, but also speeds up the discharge process!!

Tip #2 don't expose the battery to extreme cold! most manufacturers store their batteries around 60f. Throwing lithium ion batteries in the fridge is useless, and throwing them in the freezer will destroy them!

Tip #3, if you are plugged into the wall, remove your battery when its fully charged! Your AC adapter will constantly be delivering a charge to the battery which will try to "top off" the cells, this creates a constant charge/discharge cycle which adds unneccesary aging to your battery!! Typical batteries are engineered for about 600/800 charges over the span of 1 to 3 years. If you can remove your battery easily do so! and keep it somewhere cool (not cold).

Tip #4, ensure that your battery contacts are always clean! you can clean contacts with a rubber eraser (much like the ones on the back of a pencil) and also ensure tehre is no dirt or crap in the battery bay.

Tip #5, Don't let a lithium ion battery lose its charge completely! always charge back up at around 10% if you can, its also good to discharge the battery once a month to this level before charging it back up again and NEVER charge up a battery before its about to be put in prolonged storage.


So there you have it folks, my 5 magical tips to helping your battery last as long as possible (because hey those suckers are expensive!) A couple more things that you should know about the way a battery works, even when retaining a full charge, batteries start to lose their charge immediately, even while not in use, some speculate that leaving it connected to your notebook sucks juice out of it faster but the reality is the charge starts to die over time when its not plugged in and Heat will cause it to lose its charge more rapidly! Batteries will never last forever so follow these simple steps and you'll be getting more use from the juice!