How to Extend Laptop Battery Life
Laptop batteries are expensive and, I don’t know, I never had a lot of luck with laptop batteries. But, you know, I haven’t give them a lot of thought as well. So I did a little research and I wanted to offer some ways so that you can improve the life of your laptop batteries and kind of talk a little bit about saving you some money on that. So, look, there’s no remedies to restore lithium ion battery when it shut, there’s not much you can do. Yeah, there’s tricks that you can heat up the battery, and that does lower the resistance of the battery, but as soon as the temperature cools down, it goes back to its normal state. So, when you store a laptop battery, about 40 percent charge and keep it in a cool place, what you should avoid doing is keeping the battery full, and at full charge and keeping the high temperature. What that means is, like my laptop right here, it’s running on, you know, electricity on the short power, guess what I don’t keep the battery, I pop it out there when it’s on short power. Why? Because, it’s charging, it’s generating heat and that is reducing the life of my battery. Is this the way that they work? Lithium ion batteries are a big improvement over the technology we used to have, but, when you run a laptop, you know, heat is a big problem, and so, the ope, you know, this thing can rise to like 130, 150 degrees inside of the case when I’m hook up to short power with the battery in there. So, removing the battery from the laptop protects it from heat, so. Here’s just a few tips to help provide a longer life out of your laptop batteries and this will work with any device using the lithium ion batteries like iPods, etc… So, number one, on this list, is to avoid frequent full discharges as this puts additional strain on the battery. Several partial discharges with frequent recharge are better for lithium ion batteries than one deep one. Recharging a partially charge lithium ion battery does not, I repeat, does not cause harm, because there is no memory issues. In respect, lithium ion differs from nickel based batteries, so short battery life in a laptop is mainly cause by heat rather than charge and discharge batteries. Batteries with full gages, full gage laptops should be calibrated by applying a deliberate full discharge once every 30 charges. Running the pack down in the equipment does this, if ignored the fuel gage will become increasingly act less accurate and in some cases cut off the device prematurely. Keep the lithium ion battery in the cool, avoid a hot car and for prolong storage, keep the battery at a 40 percent charge level, that’s important. Consider removing the battery from the laptop when running on fix power, now some laptop manufacturers are concerned about dust and moisture accumulating inside the battery casing. Avoid purchasing spare lithium ion batteries for later use, so observe manufacturing dates, do not buy old stock, even if sold in clearance prices. If you have a spare battery, use one to the fullest and keep the other full by placing it in a refrigerator, never freeze the battery and for best results, store it at a 40 percent state of charge. There you have it, my tips to save on those doggone expensive laptop batteries and other lithium ion batteries. This suckers cost a lot of money, they should last you for a couple of years, if you use common sense, don’t go run out and buy a spare right off the get go. Use the one you got, and look, the manufacturing tip, that’s a real good ideas, especially when you’re looking at this, this online auctions at eBay and that sort of thing. There are some great websites to buy new or replacement batteries, and believe it or not lithium ion batteries, even when they’re worn out, can generally be remanufactured good as new. But, you wanna avoid buying yourself seriously out of date batteries. I’m Bruce Nater, your Frugal Tech, hey, if you like this video, find this information useful, make sure to visit our website, www.frugal, that’s F-R-U-G-A-L, brothers.com. Like the video, give us a rating, and I wanna hear your comments on how you can extend, maybe your ideas on extending the life of your lithium ion batteries. I’m Bruce Nater, Frugal Tech, and we’ll talk to you later.