Re: Any Advice on a Failing Windows Laptop Battery?

More likely that I might arrange it on the 'tech expert's' head and buy a new one.

Re: Any Advice on a Failing Windows Laptop Battery?

Re: Any Advice on a Failing Windows Laptop Battery?

Running it on battery only is a good thing. The trouble is that some people don't let the battery discharge enough before they plug the laptop back in and the battery gets a 'memory' and won't charge above a certain level. There's nothing to stop you running your laptop on mains all the time, you just lose portability.

Re: Any Advice on a Failing Windows Laptop Battery?

Ohhhhh....I thought it was a bad thing to keep your battery fully charged all the time! Gosh this technology malarky is hard work. I have charged my laptop again during this time of thread, and its already shot back down to 38%. In the battery video that Baz linked to, the guys battery was swollen and had a huge crack in it. I'm kindof scared to look at mine now

Re: Any Advice on a Failing Windows Laptop Battery?

Guilty m'Lord!

I use my laptop plugged in all the time.
Occasionally, however, I unplug it in order to take it somewhere else in the house (eg, printer) without worrying about it discharging.
It can remain running for about an hour sometimes without getting anywhere near flat, so it must be retaining much of its charge.

The main thing I concern myself with, though, is that in case of a (very unlikely) power cut the thing will keep going, certainly for long enough to save any work I'm doing. In short, the equivalent of having an UPS.

Re: Any Advice on a Failing Windows Laptop Battery?

On thing you might want to check is that when you shut down the laptop you are actually shutting it down and not just sleeping or hibernating it.

Toshiba laptops used to have this as their default setting for the "off" button and people were surprised to find the battery was flat when they next came to use it.


This may not be your problem but worth checking if the battery is going flat between sessions.



You can modify all those settings

Re: Any Advice on a Failing Windows Laptop Battery?

Modern batteries don't suffer from that "memory" problem, it is a thing of the distant past in the days of nickel-cadmium and nickel–metal hydride rechargeable batteries. However i agree with you that batteries were meant to be used and they also have a finite number of recharge cycles.

Lithium batteries are not trickle charged so leaving the computer plugged in is not the problem it once was.