subject: Laptop Battery Common Questions and Answers [print this page] Laptop Battery Common Questions and Answers
We often set our sights on price, weight, figure and configuration when we purchase a new laptop. Battery is often ignored. In fact, battery and integral performance of a laptop are inseparable. Battery is as important as CPU, mainboard, hard disk etc. We list the tips and guideline below. Let's get the most of your lithium laptop batteries.
1. How to charge your new replacement laptop battery properly?
Some laptops with lithium-ion batteries use technology of SBS brightness battery system, which can measure battery's life accurately. Although lithium-ion battery has many merits, we still need to master some professional charge method to prolong battery's life and made it maintain long time power supply. Your new HP Pavilion dv6000 Battery requires three complete charge/discharge cycles before use and achieving maximum capacity. It means the battery would have to be charged fully and then be discharged fully. Repeat it three times before starting to use the battery. By this way, battery's internal chemical materials can be activated and its internal chemical reaction can come into the optimal state. After the activation, the battery can be charged and used freely. But the battery will have to be discharged completely once a month so that the battery activity can be released by such deep discharge and battery life can be maintained.
If battery is idle for over 3 months, it is also necessary to conduct 3 cycles of complete charge and dsicharge to ensure that the battery is activated. You must control the charge time commendably when you use a Ni-MH battery. Please remember not to overcharge continually, or it will shorten the battery's life.
Furthermore, Ni-MH battery should be fully discharged before being charged. It also needs three complete discharge/ charge cycles before starting to use it. Most users are used to using Alternating Current instead of a battery for power supply when they use laptops. Actually the battery needs to be used at least once or twice per month to release the battery power completely. Then fully charge the battery with AC power once. Please remember that it is always good for rechargeable batteries to use up the battery power before giving them a full charge. Because the li-ion Dell inspiron 1525 Battery used by laptop has its own laziness and would lose its activeness when being idle for long time. It needs to be reactivated.
It is suggested to take out the battery from laptop when it uses AC power supply indoor to avoid having the battery get charged frequently. It is also suggested to shut down the laptop so that battery can be fully charged. Do not remove the AC power during charge.
In addition, the power of battery can easily be used up and most laptops have only one battery. For this reason, some manufacturers have developed a fast charge feature that enables the battery to replenish its power at the fastest pace after power draining up. One hour charge can give the battery back over 90% of its power. Why is not 100%? Because frequent fast 100% charge will greatly shorten the battery life. In order to prolong battery life, fast charge will have to be switched to slow charge(namely Constant Voltage charging method) when battery reaches 90% charge.
For a common laptop, the best charge method is to turn off the laptop when its battery is being charged. The charge time will be shortened by 30% by this method.
2.what's the "memory effect" of battery? and how to clean out it?
Ni-cd batteries, and to a lesser extent Ni-MH batteries, suffer from what's called the "memory effect". What this means is that if a battery is repeatedly only partially discharged before recharging, the battery "forgets" that it has the capacity to further discharge all the way down.To illustrate: If you, on a regular basis, fully charge your CANON NB-7L Battery and then use only 50% of its capacity before the next recharge, eventually the battery will become unaware of its extra 50% capacity which has remained unused. The battery will remain functional, but only at 50% of its original capacity.
The way to avoid the dreaded "memory effect" is to fully cycle (fully charge and
then fully discharge) the battery at least once every two to three weeks. Batteries
can be discharged by unplugging the device's AC adapter and letting the device
run on the battery until it ceases to function. This will insure your battery remains healthy.
Mh and Li-Ion batteries do not suffer the memory effect.
