Over the years, and after many laptops with NiCad, Lithium Ion and Nickel Metal Hydride battery designs I have concluded that as a matter of practical convenience, and acceptance of the reality of limitations with any power technology, I will never get a laptop that will not require a new battery at least every 2 years. Having said that, I had a Compaq Presario a while ago that had a battery I did not replace for 3 years, and that was only because it had gone from 2 1/2 hours run time to 1 hour - and I gave it to my daughter & wanted her to have a decent machine. My current HP laptop is 18 months old, and still gives me 2 1/2 hours of power. At 2 years if it is not providing at least 2 hours of run time I will replace that battery. I always get the highest capacity battery that does not change the external configuration of the laptop (no bulging over-size batteries for me).
When plugged into AC power I leave the laptop battery in place, a matter of convenience. It acts like its own built in UPS in case AC power fluctuates or fails, but I do at least have it behind a nice surge suppressor (all conventional PCs are behind a hefty UPS, lots of those in our place). I just kind of budget replacement batteries for laptop and UPS units every 2 years or so, whether they need it or not. Unless the UPS is a Belkin with a 3 year warranty, where I will get a warranty replacement if the battery reserve capacity drops to under 5 minutes before the warranty expires. For older UPS units I get replacement batteries from Interstate Batteries locally (and ensure the older batteries are recycled by them). As an aside, APC has kicked their old 2 year warranty to a 3 year warranty, so I now choose between APC and Belkin based on availability and pricing, whereas previously I would get Belkin any time I could just for the 3 year warranty. Hey, today (4th) I fly back home to NY, after nearly 2 months in SoCal helping out my parents with some medical issues. Lynda tells me the Huskies will not remember me, but I think not. I had one Dell Server lose a SCSI 73Gb HDD while I was away. But I merely remapped to its local USB Backup HDD (which is subsequently backed up to a secondary USB HDD on a File Backup Server over the LAN, then that secondary HDD is backed up to an HP LTO3 Tape Drive unit). So, despite the SCSI failure I have not missed a beat, and have two 73Gb SCSI units on hand for such incidents. I am so very pleased with my backup strategy, and the use of HDD units for my primary and secondary backup units, as opposed to Tape or optical media for a primary backup device. Anyway, happy 4th of July for those ProFoxers who celebrate that holiday (and to our British colleagues who were relieved of the burden of caring for the colonies across the pond so long ago <g>). Gil > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Andy Davies > Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 12:14 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [NF] Laptop Batter Life > > > from that site: > "most people sit their laptops on a desk and use ac power, so the battery > usually suffers, resulting in chemical 'memory', which gives them > a life of > about 3 seconds...if you have nicd or nimh batteries..." > > afaik laptop batteries are pretty much all Li-ion (including Thinkpad 400 > batteries which this guy is supposed to be talking about) and these do > *not* have the 'memory' problem that Nicad's suffered from. It has been my > experience that Li-ion batteries are more like lead-acid in behaviour and > if they go *dead* flat they will not take a subsequent charge. They also > have a life of around 3 years max. > > Andrew Davies MBCS CITP > - AndyD 8-)# > > > > > > Alan Bourke > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > mail.fm> cc: > > Sent by: Subject: Re: [NF] > Laptop Batter Life > profoxtech-bounce > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > 04/07/2007 15:42 > > Please respond to > > profox > > > > > > > Michael Madigan wrote: > > Putting it in the freezer? What does that do? > > > http://www.hackaday.com/2005/08/26/how-to-laptop-resurrection-and-upgrade/ > > > [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
