All around us needs a source of energy and most of the times, we would like an inexhaustible supply to fulfill our needs for power. Let’s talk about a laptop today and what are the needs for power that a laptop has. Before buying a laptop, you can ask opinions or search on the Internet exactly what you want. Certainly we all want the same thing: the battery to last for hours and hours, if not forever, at least a few days. But this is not possible, not right now.
The battery life is the time when the battery keeps its own autonomy and it is lower and lower compared to the one on the day of purchase. The work with new people, who don’t know how to handle a laptop’s battery can bring some disadvantages to a battery, but with a little intervention from a person who knows some stuff, these problems can be overcame.
The battery life or the autonomy of the laptop is the life of the laptop using the battery, in other words without the laptop to be connected to an outlet. You will see in this article, some tips that will certainly help to maintain the lithium batteries (most batteries are made of lithium ions) at a high performance. There are rare the cases in which you must buy a new laptop, because of the battery’s malfunction, but this can happen too, so you better protect your computer.
No matter how long you can run your laptop on battery, you will certainly want a greater autonomy and a lower power consumption. Remember that while the batteries are consumable products, so if they are not properly cared, which means cleaned and wiped from the dust that is permanently inside the laptop, their capacity on the lifetime of the laptop, will be reduced. Of course, the fact that you clean the battery at a certain periods of time will not make your battery to run with an additional hour, it will just protect the battery from becoming outdated before its time.
To keep the battery “life” for a longer period of time, you can follow several steps. They are presented next as I found them on some Websites I entered.
When you buy a new battery, you have to format it, just like you do with computers. When buying the laptop, with a 100% loaded battery, you should use the laptop’s battery until it is completely discharged and then you must recharge the battery until it reaches 100%. This will help you to know exactly how much energy of the battery can hold an electrical charge. There is no need to fully discharge the battery, but when you perform a charging, make sure it is 100% loaded or charged before removing the power cable.
The battery must be used. If you always keep your laptop plugged in, the battery wears out by disuse. If you think this will protect the battery, think again. The same is true if you remove the battery and put it aside. The battery must be fully charged and fully discharged regularly, at least once a month. Do not pass over the loading cycles of the battery. The battery is tested to handle a certain number of charging and discharging operations, during which the battery still retains its optimal properties. In general, this number is of several hundreds. For example, the Apple battery retains 80% of the original capacity for about 300 cycles, but manufacturers do not make this information public. Note that each time you connect your laptop to an outlet, with the battery inside the laptop, is considered to be a charging cycle, whether you keep the laptop plugged in for 20 minutes or for an hour and a half.
Keep the computer in a cool place and also the battery, if you remove it from the computer. Remove the battery and keep it charged at a 50% of its total power, in a place with temperature not exceeding 20 to 22 degrees Celsius. If you put the battery to be stored completely discharged, it is possible to enter a state of deep discharge and you will no longer be able to use it again. If you store the battery fully charged for a long time, it is possible to lose the battery capacity, so you will have less autonomy. In other words, if you care for your laptop, you should take care of the battery too.
