Re: Laptop battery only lasts for a few minutes - is it knackered?

ofn01 wrote in
Ye-dnbm9F5IxPuXenZ2dnUVZ8qCdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxx:

> Martin Underwood wrote:
>> Martin Underwood wrote in
>> 437334a8$0$82674$ed2619ec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
>>
>>
>>> The battery in my laptop goes from fully charged to totally
>>> discharged within about 5 minutes. If I'm lucky, I get about 10
>>> seconds of warning bleep before the PC switches off. When I charge
>>> the battery again, it goes from totally discharged to 100% charged
>>> in about 10 minutes. This suggests that the energy-storing capacity
>>> of the battery is severely reduced.
>>> I've tried charging it until it's 100% (not leaving it charging
>>> after that) and then discharging it totally until the laptop
>>> switches off, but several cycles of this haven't restored its full
>>> capacity. When I had this problem previously, several
>>> charge/discharge cycles were sufficient to restore reasonably
>>> capacity - well, at least it would run the laptop for about 45
>>> minutes, which is better than 5 minutes! If the battery is knackered,
>>> how much do new laptop batteries cost -
>>> roughly?
>>
>> I forgot to say: the battery is a Lithium-Ion made by NEC.
>
> You can try having it shut right off, then doing a full charge without
> the laptop doing anything for a full 24 hours. (I think most laptops
> will charge a battery while the computer part is switched off)

Yes, I've tried that. Having discharged the battery to the extent that the
laptop will allow (ie to the point at which the laptop switches itself off,
with the "switch off or hibernate at 3%" behaviour disabled), I've tried
charging it fully overnight - on some occasions with the laptop turned off
and in some cases with it left on. In all cases, the "charging" LED changes
from red (charging) to green (charged) within about 10 minutes.

Normally I use the laptop exclusively on mains, only briefly unplugging it
to run on batteries while I'm moving it from one room to another. Even then,
I have to be quick otherwise the laptop switches off between unplugging it
in one room, moving the PC and charger to the new room and plugging it back
in. It's a bugger!

I see that LiIon batteries are OK being left charging overnight but don't
like being deep-discharged too often - just the opposite of NiCd and NiMH
batteries! Maybe one day someone will make a battery which behaves like the
electrical equivalent of a jug of water: one which doesn't leak away water
once it's been filled to the brim and then left unattended for a long time
(ignoring evaporation!) and which can always store the same amount of water
no matter whether you only use a bit of water and then refill it or whether
you empty it completely before refilling it.


.

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