Dell Laptop Battery

Speculator

On the Dell website, it says

Charging a Battery
The battery is automatically charged whenever the computer is plugged in. Dell advises that you leave the battery in the system at all times so it will retain its charge. It will not harm the battery to leave it in the system, even if you are always using the computer on AC power.

see http://ftp1.us.dell.com/diags/R66243.htm

Is this the correct advice or would it be better if I removed the battery when using AC power?

electron_3

Speculator wrote:

On the Dell website, it says



see http://ftp1.us.dell.com/diags/R66243.htm

Is this the correct advice or would it be better if I removed the battery when using AC power?

Leave the thing in as, the battery only gets a minimal trickle charge when in use via mains, but when the PC is off but plugged in thats when it will have
all power going to the batt for charging.

MercilessKiller

I was personally advised by someone to remove the battery when its fully charged and laptop is running off power as it prolongs its life!

seeing as i usually have the lappy plugged in, the battery is sat in its case fully charged so when i take the lappy out its there and ready!

Bob63

Two reasons for not removing a battery:

1) If you live in an area prone to power cuts like my village then the battery is a godsend because you don't lose any work.

2) The battery release mechanism has a finite life. Insert and remove the battery too many times and you will break it.

The advice you received might have made sense in the days of nickel cadmium batteries, but with nickel metal hydride and lithium ion it is not an issue (IMHO)

Mike

rishishah

The charger on most laptops is intelligent and hence will either stop charging and do a trickel charge when the battery is full. This will NOT harm the battery.

Also most laptops have Li-Ion or Li-Polymer batteries that are intelligent too....

Leave the charger in....

thor

My Dell laptop has a 2 hour battery but I began to notice that it was not lasting anywhere near this period when I was using it. I have not altered any of the power saving measures and have only been surfing the web.
I decided to time how long the battery would last if I left the laptop and let it go into hibernate mode and it lasted only 1hr 45mins. I will be timing how long it lasts when I actually use it next but presumeably this will be even shorter.
What would Dell's policy be regarding batteries given that it is so hard to standardise battery life with respect to how much you use it. I am not so fussed about the battery as I will be using the laptop powered from mains usually but in emergencies I could need the battery for 2 hours so it would be nice to know that it was up to it.
My laptop is still under the 90 days rtb deal but I would not want to return it as everything else is working fine(it even burned a back up of winXP on the 2nd attempt). Perhaps if I asked nicely they might send me out a new battery rather than go through the expense of paying for postage for whole machine?