Laptop battery dying :(

Narks

Narks

Vastly intelligent whale-like being from the stars
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My laptop battery is dying - logged onto Ubuntu today, and it tells me it's at 34% capacity, and that it may be old or damaged. My laptop is almost a year and a half old, so I'm leaning towards damaged rather then old (although, the laptop was a rather cheap one, $700 AUD or something).

The battery is definitely dying, though - I've noticed the lifetime has dropped considerably compared to when I first purchased the laptop - hardly an hour.

My two questions:

1). Should I buy a new battery? What should I be looking for in a battery?

2). How can I take better care of my battery? Most of the time, I leave my laptop plugged into the charger. I occasionally use it without a charger (maybe ~1 hour every day), but most of the time when I use it, its plugged in (~2-3 hours a day). I leave the laptop plugged in when I'm not using it.
 
S

Sevion

The DIY Ninja
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@#2 well there's your problem. Don't keep your laptop plugged in all the time when you're using it. Or when you do, take out the battery when it's at full capacity. Because the battery is plugged in, the laptop is using power from the battery, not the AC. That means the battery is constantly going 99%, 100%, 99%, 100%, 99%, 100% etc etc. That is what we call "cycling the battery".

LiPo, Lion, and NiMh (all batteries, especially rechargable ones) lose charge over time. They lose them especially fast when they are being "cycled". They also lose them when they are never used.

The best practice for batteries is to charge them to full capacity, use it to nearly*** empty and then recharge them. When using the appliance for long periods and the battery is at full power, switch to AC power and unplug the battery.

I say to charge nearly empty because some batteries (NiMh does this) go into polarity reversal and get permanently damaged.

My take on things: get a new battery. Preferably something like a nine cell battery so that you don't run out of power when you need to use the battery.

Just remember to take care of it. A healthy battery is a working battery.
 
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