on 4/19/00, Mark Kral <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Anyways, I have two batteries for my 2400. I use them occasionally. Most of
> my work is done while plugged in, buty I do usually do about 10-30 minutes
> worth of work every other day on battery power, plus run the battery almost
> completely down about once every week or two. Should I rotate the batteries
> for best results, or would it be better to use up one, and keep the other
> one in storage until the first one dies?
>
Everyone has a different take on batteries. Even would-be experts seem to
vary considerably on opinions and on whether it's NiCad, NiMH or Lion.
However, all batteries have finite charge/discharge life cycles--figure
around 500 cycles--and will suffer from gradual voltage depression on
recharge. The loss of capacity if repetitively partially discharged, then
recharged, is somewhat different from what used to be called "memory"
effect, especially as referred to Nicads. Capacity can be restored by deep
discharging, then fully charging. Lion batteries (allegedly) also suffer
much less from gradual voltage depression.
So combining what I've read/heard and exercising some common sense while
trying to preserve these hard-to-get, outrageously expensive 2400 batteries,
here's what I do:
1. Try to run on AC power as much as possible.
(This means, if we are doomed to be orphaned for further batteries, try to
avoid excessive battery use, i.e. recharge cycles)
2. Effect a deep discharge once every 2 months, or whenever I need to
really use the batteries (eg. on flights). Even in a car or boat I try to
keep on auxiliary power whenever possible. A power inverter works fine in
both the car and boat. Lion batteries have no memory effect so a
semi-charged state is OK and my inadvertent empirical experiences would bear
this out.
3. Keep the spare battery fully charged and rotate every 3-4 weeks but long
periods of non-use seem not to harm the 2400 Lion batteries.
(I had to leave two batteries and my spare 2400 in the USA for 10 months.
Then my brother used it while his Wall Street went to Apple, charged the
batteries up and sent the whole kit to me in Europe after his WS came back.
All none the worse for wear or staying dormant and semi-charged. On minimal,
non-rigorous power management procedures, one battery still runs at over
100-120 minutes, the other at around 90-110 min (on a Vimage copper G3-320).
The third battery constantly used in my main 2400 has served me since Feb.
1998 and gets about 90-100 minutes (on a Newer G3-240); on a copper 320 it
might get the "missing" 10 minutes back. Even it lay unused for one stretch
of 6 months, somewhere between semi-charged and discharged, due to what I
had wrongly thought were "terminal MB problems."**) YMMV.
Sid
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