Take care of those batteries

Posted by anthonykuo , Aug, 2009 @ 12:54 pm

I always hear my friends complain about their laptop’s terrible battery life. “I unplug it for more than 2 minutes and it shuts down.” And then they demonstrate.

What shocks me about these incidences is how new their computer is. While the average battery life isn’t spectacular (somewhere around 4 hours,) battery life that can be measured in minutes is, well, ridiculous. I attribute it to how terribly they take care of it.

Battery Care helps the user manage laptop batteries in a better way by providing detailed information and advanced functionality that the operating system does not offer.

One of the most interesting functions of Battery Care its monitoring of the battery’s discharge cycle. The program will suggest a full battery recharge every 30 discharge cycles. The software to manage laptop batteries can also be configured to automatically switch power plans based on the power source of the laptop. [GHacks]

But probably the best way to take care of a battery is to discharge and recharge it completely at least once a month. It keeps the cycles long and the capacity high. What my friends probably did was something that people also do to their cell phones – discharge it halfway, charge it for 5 minutes, unplug it again, discharge it for a teeny bit more, recharge it partially, and so on. Don’t do it. That’s terrible for battery life.

Tags: battery, battery life, cell phone, laptop, life