Battery Best Practices while at home/docking

Have we decided what the best practice is for controlling the battery when much of your use is at home and plugged in either to the laptop or while docked.

I only got a year on my last Lenovo 9 cell in my T61 and I want more than that out of my W520.

I think my problem with the T61 was having it always plugged in and charging at 100%.

I want to have this battery last longer

 

I always leave the battery in my computers. I think that the computer won't recharge the battery until the charge level drops a bit: Yesterday, I saw my T420s sitting at 98% for a while.

John

 

The power management is more intelligent in the new laptops. As John said, they don't continuously charge.

 

I went to battery maintenance and read the help section which of course was of little help.

But I did set a custom charge mode to start charging at 41% and stop charging at 85%. That should cycle the battery around its sweet spot some.

I am now in a docking station with 2 monitors so different than when it was on my lap all day. At that time I just would unplug it and run it down to 20-30% and than replug it in when it got low and let it charge again.

Ostensibly the battery manager will do the same thing.

Perry

 

Thinkpad power manager has settings to help lengthen battery life by not charging until the battery dips below a certain threshold that you can set in the settings. This helps quite a bit for battery longevity.

Also, be advised that if you decide to run the W520 with the battery out you will experience dimished performance.

 

In the new li-ion batteries you really don't have to worry about overcharging since the battery will automatically stop charging once it's full.
best practices:
1. You want to avoid full charge/discharge cycles; a partial charge/discharge cycle is better for battery life.
2. not charging the battery for a while after it reaches 0% can permanently damage the battery.
3. Doing a few charge discharge cycles at the start is good because it will help build your battery stats.
4. avoid heat.

 

I have set a custom battery manager setup in Battery Maintenance. I have it set to start charging at 44% and stop at 88%.

However it is not doing that. It is sitting in my mini dock 3 at 99-100%.

I am puzzled.

Perry

 

It will take a long time for the battery to self-discharge down to your range. Run on battery until the charge drops to somewhere between 44% and 88%. Then see if it starts recharging.

John