Battery question: 11 month old R61, 6-cell

I've got an R61 with the 6-cell battery; it's about 10-11 months old. Playing around with the Power Manager, I've recently noticed that while the battery's "Design capacity" is listed as 56Wh, the "Full charge capacity" is listed as approx 44Wh. What's up with this? Last week, the Power Manager notified me something along the lines of "your battery can hold 79% of its original charge" (although I don't remember the exact wording). Curiously, 44 is about 79% of 56. The PM tells me the cycle count is 126.

So what's happening here? Is it the inevitable decline of a Li-Ion battery? Or something I can alter by resetting the battery (PM hasn't yet recommended doing so)?

More data: I use the laptop on battery power most of the time, carrying it from room to room for web browsing and writing, with the screen at probably 2/3 brightness. PM tells me a full charge should get me about 3.5 to not quite 4 hrs with the WiFi enabled. When done, I usually reconnect it to the charger and I've got the charging thresholds set to start charging if the battery falls below 60% and charge it up to 95%. I have the power scheme set to "Energy Star."

TIA, john

 

This is normal (and in fact a 21% decline for 126 cycles is actually pretty good). You can try a battery reset, but I doubt it will do much.

I went through 3 batteries for my T40 (all had a design capacity of 47.52 WHr). After 5 years my original battery only stored about 6.5 WHr (although it would run for 30 minutes after it hit 0%) and had been cycled >500 times, my second battery was a generic dud, and my third one still held a respectable 41 WHr after ≈100 cycles and 9 months use.

If the battery life is no longer sufficient you will have to buy a new one. I bought the third battery for my T40 from Calcellular. Their prices are good and the battery served me very well until I finally upgraded to an x200 (the T40 is still serving a friend).

 

Better batteries are on the way.

 

My battery can hold 95% of the design charge capacity, and it is also 10 to 11 months old. Usage pattern, as well as good charging practice helps to prolong battery's life.
Also, it has about 300 charge cycles now.

 

Is it the 6-cell? And praytell, what are your usage and charging patterns?

 

The biggest thing (what I do now on my x200, but could never get to work properly on my T40) is to not keep the battery at a full charge all the time, and not continually top it off. Also, you should try and avoid running your battery all the way down (battery circuit cutoff) if at all possible [I did this several times on my first T40 battery and it became worthless as a result].

I would suggest you set charge thresholds under batter maintenance in the advanced tab of Lenovo Power manager. I use start at 60% and stop at 95%. These thresholds substantially reduce the number of cycles and the frequency of top offs.

The other big problem is heat from a running laptop. For this reason you don't want it fully charged when you are plugged in for long stretches (but having it between 30 and 80% is fine). Charge thresholds can also be invaluable for achieving this (much more convenient than pulling the battery out whenever you plug in).

 

yeh well hopefully HP doesnt have exclusive rights to that tech.

 

I actually do use the 60-95% thresholds, set in Power Manager. And while I've read a number of the threads here about battery health, I continue to be impressed by the battery performance of my wife's 3-yr old Dell Inspiron 600m, which although it's lived most of it's life plugged in the charger, probably at 100% because Dell doesn't have such a cool Power Manager app, still seems to get excellent battery life when she unplugs it to work in another room. Different hardware, I know, but impressive, nonetheless.

Thanks for the tips and confirmation that I'm doing most all I can with the equipment I have and the usage patterns that fit my life.

~john