subject: What You Should Know About Lithium Ion Laptop Battery [print this page] The greatest advantage of owning a laptop is its unmatched portability. The battery power is a decisive factor to determine how long you could use your laptop in the place where electricity is unavailable. The most common-used laptop batteries today are Lithium Ion batteries.
Traditional rechargeable batteries might have "memory effect" that does not apply to Lithium Ion. The effect is also used to explain once there is any battery doesn't work for us at its full capacity. In order to overcome this, people charge this laptop battery in certain ways to avoid or fix. Lithium Ion batteries' poor performance is usually caused by mishandling or age.
Quite a few of us like to fully discharge a laptop battery before we recharge it. This is wrong. Lithium Ion laptop batteries have limited amount of charge cycles a fully discharge will shorten its serving life span.
How to make your laptop battery pack have longer life span?
The charge cycles of Lithium Ion batteries are from 300 to 600, which could be used from 2 to 4 years. For taking advantage of your laptop battery optimally, the following things you should notice:
* If you don't need the laptop to finish a task, don't forget to enable the power saving feature while you use your laptop on battery power.
* Calibrate your battery with a full discharge every 30 charges for keeping its fuel gauge's accuracy. Before recharging, set your setting to the automatic cut-off point.
* Disconnect the battery when you use AC power. If the two used at the same time, the internal temperature of the battery rises, thus the aging process of your battery accelerate.
* For battery not use for a long time, make sure that it has about 40% charge level and store in a cool dry place. Lower temperature slows down aging process of laptop battery.
* If you like to use battery to run your laptop, charge it as often as possible.
* If the outside temperature is high, don't leave your laptop or battery in your car. Higher temperature shortens the life of your battery.
