New Laptop battery - best way to prolong life

[Deleted User]

Carrot007 said:

Of course you may have repsonded in a is is safe rather than will it do the battery harm. Well my OH has a top end (£2500+, bad at gaming but fairly high end workstation, anyway...) dell. Trackpad stopped working right. Engineer comes out. Out you leave it plugged in all the time and the trackpad stopped working due to battery buldge. Please at least unplug while not in use. So there is that as well.

Have a look at the Dell Power manager application, I can configure all sorts of things around battery charging, try the option "Primarily AC use" as I do as this prevents the battery from being charged to 100% and slows down the charging rate.



I mostly use my laptop at my desk all week for home working with just the occasional couple of hours on battery when I'm in a meeting in the office or watching Netflix in bed so it suits me not to ever have 100% charge

You can do more complex things, so if you normally use you laptop on battery say from 9am-5pm then it will make sure it has 100% for the start of that period and whenever it is plugged in during that period, but outside of that period it will remain at a lower charge state even if left constantly plugged in.

Rodders53

Odd.  I must be the exception that proves the rule.

My HP lappy is on its original battery pack. Mostly used on mains. Occasionally used off mains and runs for a good length of time.
It's now almost 6 years old. 
CPUID's HW Monitor software reports design and actual capacity are the same and has 0% wear.

SWMBOs Samsung lappy battery needed replacing at around 4-5 years though due to low capacity and 'wear'. 

In the grand scheme of things it's not been worth worrying over battery life of our laptops...  The mobility scooter lead-acids are another matter.