Re: power cell replacement
- From: Barry Watzman <WatzmanNOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:05:42 -0400
He's right, you are [generally] wrong.
Leaving a battery in a laptop will usually destroy it in 6 to 24 months. There are multiple issues, a major issue is simple heat from other heat generating components of the laptop. The charging circuit is also an issue.
Larry wrote:
"Linea Recta" <mccm.vos@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:4ab6745e$0$83248.
$e4fe514c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
I've already taken out the main battery to increase its lifespan.
Totally unnecessary. Simply leave the laptop plugged in every chance you get. Lithium-Ion and Lithium-Polymer batteries are float batteries, unlike Ni-Cd and Ni-Mh cells. If you never discharge them below 80%, and recharge them as soon as you can, they'll last for thousands of charges. Deep discharging is so destructive, every battery has a specially programmed IC in it to PREVENT you from discharging them below 50%. That's when the IC tells the computer to shut down to protect the battery pack from ultimate destruction.
There is, and always has been, a problem with the IC and its programming. What the IC THINKS is the current charge state of the pack and what the REAL charge state of the pack is grow constantly wider apart because the programming of the IC is an average for cells of this type and the cells in your pack aren't average. So, every so often, I like 2 months as a yardstick because my computer is discharged daily, you need to "cycle" the battery pack to the point where the IC shuts down the pack ("dead"), then IMMEDIATELY recharge the pack for a minimum of 16 hours of continuous charging so the IC can find the point of full charge, which it measures as a sudden rise of cell voltage under charging current. A finishing charge, after the main high current charge, is what takes so long and should not be disturbed. The IC will shut down the charge, completely, to prevent overcharging which makes these wonder batteries explode quite violently because cell warpage results in internal shorting to hundreds of amps for a few seconds..BOOM!
So, run it until it's dead every couple of months, then IMMEDIATELY recharge for a minimum of 16 hours uninterrupted. All other times, recharge it as quickly as you can find a power outlet to do so, and as often as you can to reduce the destruction deep cycling causes. You get many years of service out of them. This same method is also very useful in your cellular and other Lithium-powered rechargeable devices.
If you store the battery pack for over 2 weeks without use, run the laptop until the IC shuts down the laptop on discharge, then give it the full 16 hour recharge cycle IMMEDIATELY, to reset the IC before you start using the pack again. Lithium packs self-discharge something awful as they leak like hell inside just sitting there, the nature of the beast. The IC timer gets lost if it just sits and self-discharges. Notice your initial instruction was to recharge the computer for 16-20 hours the day you got it...before using it to prevent you going really deep in discharge from a confused charge IC allowing it to go way too far. You ignored it, of course, everyone does and did initial damage to a brand new battery pack the day you got it.....
Case in point....for any critics......
I have a Digital Mind Corporation (DMC) Xclef 500 120GB hard drive MP3 player/recorder/FM Radio:
http://pocketnow.com/review/digital-mind-corporations-dmc-xclef-500
It's an antique by mp3 player standards. It even outlived the company! I bought it the 2nd week it was offered for sale in the USA. Last month, as I noticed its runtime of 22 hours was down to 10, I tore it apart and replaced it 4/3 C cell Li-Ion 2000maH cell with a newfangled 4/3 C cell Li-Polymer 2800maH cell. Bought in early 2004, that's over 5 years of hard use as it's my main MP3 player in my work truck. I rest my case about this method of making Lithium rechargeables have long lives. 5 days/week x 52 weeks x 5 years = 1300 usage cycles, give or take a few hundred as it was also used on weekends a lot.
This battery was so old, the charge controller was a separate PC board held into the end of it by the shrinkwrap case. I had to move that board to the new cell as I had to make my own battery pack. Works great! Will now run about 30 hours continuously!
By the way, looking at the webpages, this monster player seems to be still available with various drive sizes in it if you want a great player without the glitz. The drives are standard 2.5" laptop drives available anywhere and the OS supports up to one 137GB FAT16 partition. Mine had a 40GB drive in it, initially, but a friend upgraded his big laptop from 120GB to something much larger so gave me this 120GB Toshiba drive. I reformatted it in a laptop and simply plugged it into the Xclef HD-500 player. If you tell it to simply random play the entire drive, I'm not sure how many thousands of hours that is, now..(c;] The player has no copy protection games. You simply plug it into any computer and it is recognized as an external USB hard drive by PC, Mac or Linux boxes. As a USB drive, you can put any files on or off it with any file manager, even a DOS window. No funny business. A great use for it is as an extra, SELF-BATTERY-POWERED, hard drive for your netbook! It uses no power from your netbook battery, unlike other USB portable drives, so your runtime is the same. It runs much longer than even my extended runtime, 9-cell Samsung NC10 is capable of running, so just recharge it when you recharge the netbook and you have nearly doubled your storage on a removable drive that's very easy to load...with anything, not just music....(c;]
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