Laptop battery - charging

Legacy_user

I have a wifi laptop and always use it with a power lead, (only once/twice have experimented and used the wifi facility). When the curser is run over the battery icon, it always says something in the region of

"98% available, plugged in, not charging), current power plan balanced."

So, when does it start to charge?, does charging kick in when it goes below a certain % ?,

Yes, dumb questions but questions that I would like answering.

fwor

It varies from make to make.

My Dell of a few years ago would always start to charge every time you connected the power supply. It shagged out the battery really quickly.

My current (old) Compaq Evo won't even try to charge the battery unless it thinks the battery level has dropped to a certain level (90%, I think). It hardly ever gets charged.

If you're lucky yours will be an intelligent system like the Compaq uses - it seems to make a big difference to battery life.

totalsolutions

I would think any battery would charge on the mains if below 100%, you would want the battery fully charged. Compaq Evo laptops have a battery power cycle in the bios and recalibrates the meter maybe yours does. All my devices start to charge when plugged in, ie tooth brush, mouse, car battery, camera, iPod.....

System

Thanks, maybe I could have added that it is an Acer Aspire 9420

GaryS

I have an Acer Aspire 7720G and tend to run it on battery until it gets to about 5-10% remaining and then plug it in to charge up.

I am sure that I read somewhere that doing this helps to prolong the already short battery life of laptops, as it makes the battery work a little rather than constantly trying to charge it.

I maybe wrong though...