best way to power laptop in the house?

red_devil

When in the house and mains is available is it best to use that and only use battery when you cant use mains?

Thanks.

Also how long should battery last as in years or is that like saying how long is a piece of string?

ComplexP

Probably best to power from the mains when in the house but remove the battery under these conditions. Only put the battery in when you intend to use it on the move because keeping a battery at constant full charge is not good for it.

I think your battery will last a lot longer if you follow this advice (although I am fully prepared to be blown away by someone far more well informed )

macman

Batteries rarely last more than about 3 years.

esuhl

Anecdotally, I know a few people who have left their laptop plugged into the mains all the time and their batteries only provides about ten minutes' charge now. I think you're usually better off fully charging, then (nearly) fully discharging the battery to prolong its life.

NonGeographicalMan

If you leave a battery in your laptop all the time with the mains connected it regularly top up charges it and this kills the battery's ability to hold charge in the end (particularly after a year or two). But if you don't leave a battery in the laptop and you have a brief power blip or power cut then you lose all the work on your PC in any open documents, emails etc you have not fully saved. In my experience having your notebook pc powered off totally unexpectedly is usually exceedingly inconvenient.

In my own case my original HP battery died under warranty and they sent me two replacements that did not have the correct model number for my notebook unit, although they did fit (I suspect they were out of stock of the correct battery and sent these because they still worked after a fashion and most customers don't bother checking the model number of the battery sent against HP's own web site). HP then grudgingly later found me the correct battery and sent that to me to but never asked for the other two batteries back (classic large company incompetence). I find both these other batteries do work in the machine but they never fully charge to 100% but only to about 98% or so. Something to do with the total capacity of the battery.

The long and the short of it is that the correct battery that has been in the laptop for over four years now only holds its charge for about five minutes if I pull the mains plug but the incorrect batteries still hold charge for more than an hour. But they have spend most of their lives sitting in the draw not used.

So my recommendation would be to get yourself a cheap mains powered UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) supply so that you still have cover when the mains goes off or blips for a second or two but to leave your notebook battery out of the machine except when you actually need to use your battery on battery power. Of course if your own mains supply is super reliable and the last time you had a power cut was five years ago then perhaps you are prepared to risk no battery and also no UPS but living in a country area with overhead power lines we get power outages of a half second etc during thunderstorms quite regularly and also have one to two second switchover blips now and again (usually when some large bird or other unfortunately fries itself on the overhead lines). So I could only run with no battery here if I bought a UPS, if that is I didn't have three batteries for this notebook and so am prepared to kill the battery life of one of them by leaving it in the machine 24/7 whilst the other two still have nearly all their life when charged, even though they are four years old.

I hope this advice is of some use to you.