A tip for all you... - Page 2

Thats correct - however I prefer to think of my battery as the ultimate in UPS's. If you have a desktop with a UPS and the power goes you get enough time to save your work and power down safely. With a laptop battery you get enough time to finish your work. It's quite likely the power will come back on before you even notice its gone off. For me that makes the cost of replacing the battery a justified expense. I bought 2 and cycle between them on alternate weeks.

Same thing happend to me, after a class I set it up to hibernate but it never did, and 30 minutes when I was at lunch and took it out it was REALLY hot. I actually got an HD temp warning from Centrino Hardware control, the HD was running at like 58 or 59C

Battery life is not counted on the number of times it charges from 99 to 100%. Charge/discharge cycles are an average rating until the battery loses a majority of it's charge holding capacity, which implies that it was discharged a fair amount and then recharged.

I keep my 9300 plugged in 95% of the time. I specifically got a new desk so I could do this instead of constantly running it off battery like I did to my 1100. My dad has a 27 month old 1100 and it still shows 3:30 on the battery life because he never uses it. He does not remove it from the computer either.

I agree with moman, a "discharge cycle" is when the battery is drained below 20% and then recharged. If you have the 99-100% as the only affect on your battery... you may still need to due a proper maintenance cycle on the battery to get full life out of it before you plan to take it mobile.

Well, maybe that depends on the type of battery you have.
Maybe Dell have made their new batteries a little more intelligent than the older ones.

Above, I was actually telling you about my experience with both my batteries for the Inspiron 8000. This laptop can take two batteries at a time.
As everyone kept telling me that there was no memory effect with Li-Ion-batteries, that you can safely recharge them at whatever level they are, bla bla bla, etc, I've almost never taken them out and used the machine both on AC as well as on batteries.

One funny morning, both the batteries were gone. Just like that. After not even one bloody year.

I still have them here somewhere under my desk. Now, they last about 5 mins, if I'm lucky.
I've had the mobo and the entire power management checked. It's definitely the batteries.

So, what do you expect me to think after that?

If anyone has got a hint for me what to do with these batteries, please let me know.

Sebastian... the cell's in the battery can go bad from a surge. If you had surge in the system it would easily fry the batteries and not the rest of the system since older laptops still pump all power (even AC power) thru the batteries.

You'd be quite surprised what kind of short-term G-force shocks modern hard drives can take without damage.

Did anything happen to the screen? I am afraid to close the screen of my 9300 because I think that the screen will melt off...or something to that degree...

So I should remove the battery each time I go to work and put my toshiba on a docking station??? that makes absolutely no sense to me.

Aha. Didn't know.

Do you happen to know how the Inspiron 9300 does it?
Maybe there is a difference to the Inspiron 8000?

I know it works - in part - like you say in some cars (for example, the power for certain electric devices (indicators, heating fans etc.) often comes directly from the battery, even when the engine is running), but I thought that laptops were a little more intelligently managed.

So, as for laptops, what's that mean exactly?
Does it mean all power goes into the batts when they are in the laptop and the latter is on AC?
And there is one more thing:
If all power went through the batts first, how could the laptop (even an older one) work on AC then with no batts in?

I'd really like to know, 'cos I don't wanna ruin those batteries again...

Could you at least tell me, WHY you think it doesn't make sense???
I explained above, why I think the way I think.
What part in my thoughts makes no sense to you?


BTW: I'm not saying it's supposed to make sense to you, but to your laptop's battery.
And it sure as hell wouldn't hurt your battery, if you did remove it when connecting to AC.

Just like in your car... the power from the alternator (AC plug) goes to the battery. But the alternator wire is connected to the battery terminal and connected to the 0 gauge wire that also powers all your equipment in your car.

After cranking your car... if your Alternator is stable enough it could run without a battery also. I've been in a wreck where my battery was split open and destroyed... but the engine was still running, so I was able to drive it to a repair shop to let it sit.

The laptop is the same way. It works on DC current. All power is transmitted over the Positive wire, while the ground doesn't circulate power back into the system like AC does. So the same wire that runs from the AC plug inside your computer to the battery is also on the same "terminal" as the wire going from the battery to the motherboard on your laptop.

Understand now?

And as for the newer system of charging which Dell decided to try marketing the feature under it's own catchy name of "ExpressCharge" (easy to confuse with ExpressCard if you ask me) the AC plug on the laptop goes to a potentiometer that is connected to a small chip and a couple of asymetrical load balance circuits. This means that the "ExpressCharge" feature is able to seperate power directly to the motherboard as required, and whatever is left over of your max draw is automatically pulled for the battery.

This means if your system is operating at a electrical draw of only 30w, the circuit will send 30w to the motherboard and will automatically continue to pull the other 60w that your power brick can support to send to your battery seperately. Where as the older system would pull only an additional 10-20w for the battery. This effectively cuts the recharge time of your battery by 1/3 to 1/2 the time it used to take with older systems.

And so concludes this episode of Bill Nye The Science Guy.