Laptop batteries

[Derek Broughton]

Charles Yao wrote:

> On 1/9/06, Brian Puccio <brian at brianpuccio.net> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, 2006-01-08 at 10:41 -0800, Tom Marshall wrote:

>> > I don't know about recharging, but the battery will fail to hold a
>> charge if
>> > left plugged in for a long time.  A couple years ago, I had a laptop
>> (with a
>> > Li-Ion battery of course) and left it plugged in for about a year
>> straight.
>> > After that, the battery went directly from 96% to 3% charge -- it only
>> > lasted for 15 minutes or so.

Li-ion batteries are only _expected_ to last 2 - 3 years.  1 year is pretty
short, but not unheard of.  

>> I've had my current laptop since September of 2004 and it is plugged in
>> all day while I'm at work, the afternoon while I'm at home using and at
>> night while I sleep. About 10 hours a week it gets used while not
>> plugged in. So far, the battery performance is the same as when I bought
>> it. I've made a wear spot in the keyboard though.
>>
>> (IBM ThinkPad R51 1836BDU, bluetooth CDC, faster harddrive and 1GB of
>> RAM added to the base config myself)
>>
> Same here. I dont know how to take the battery our of my dell inspron, so
> I leave it in while plugged. I keep it on for most of the day plugged in
> for over a year now, and i dont notice any difference.

Did you know there's a recall on some recent Dell batteries?  Too bad, mine
wasn't one of them.

I'm only getting about 1.5 hours out of my Inspiron battery after a year,
with use pretty much the same as Charles'.
-- 
derek