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Question about battery

post #1 of 9
9/14/06 at 1:43am
Thread Starter 
My laptop is a Toshiba M70 SR3 and I've had it for about 9 months now. I use it as a desktop replacement and have it on pretty much the whole day. I only shut it off when I go to sleep at night. What I've been doing since I got the laptop is letting it run on battery power, wait until the low battery indicator appears, then plug in the ac adaptor to charge the battery. Once the battery is 100% charged, I will unplug the adaptor and let it run on battery power again until it's almost drained, then I charge it again and repeat. This results in the battery being drained and fully recharged several times a day.

I have always thought that this was the correct way to take care of the battery but after reading some topics on these forums I'm not sure anymore. Am I damaging the battery or any other part of the laptop by charging it so much? Should I not bother with battery power and just let it run on ac power all the time, and if so, should I remove the battery or leave it in?
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post #2 of 9
9/14/06 at 1:46am
why do people do this?

Do not bother with that whole routine.
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post #3 of 9
9/14/06 at 2:36am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for your reply. So I will be fine if I leave it plugged in at all times with the battery inside?
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post #4 of 9
9/14/06 at 7:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by YP5 Toronto
why do people do this? Do not bother with that whole routine.
Well there are a ton of battery recalls going around over them causing fires and many articles on how to prevent laptop batteries from doing that sort of thing. In each article is clearly states to not leave your battery charging once it's fully charged because Lithium Ion is a very energy dense substance... Thus why they can explode due to the unneeded heat being constantly generated. They also go on to mention when using AC power, you should remove your battery. Makes perfect sense to me... Besides overcharging your battery will just shorten it's life span. FWIW, here's a video tip.
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post #5 of 9
9/14/06 at 1:59pm
Those exploding batteries were a problem casued by some faulty cells produced by sony and used in various laptops including some dell latitudes and sony vaio's. This is a different issue altogether.

OP, if you go into the Notebook Guides section in the main part of the forum, there's an entire post on how to care for your battery. The bottom line is that it is OK to use the laptop on AC with the battery in. It is arguable whether the extra heat while on ac is enough to actually reduce the lifecycle of the batttery or not, but some people suggest removing the battery and storing it in a "cool" place when you don't need it to preserve it. One thing that is bad forthe battery is to run it all the way down. That works for teh batteries in cellphones & other stuff like that, but laptop batteries use a differnt technology that does not suffer fromt he same memory effect and running the battery down to zero can actually damage the cells.
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post #6 of 9
9/14/06 at 9:58pm
Okay, this is disheartening, because in my "Maximizing battery life" section in my manual for my A110-ST1111 it says to drain it all the way out at least once a month. Then to use the AC adaptor. So Toshiba is telling me to do something that's completely against what I'm supposed to do??

Also, I could use some suggestions for an external battery to where I don't have to use AC power. Any ideas? Thanks. I just used one by APC and it totally did not live up to its advertising.
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post #7 of 9
9/15/06 at 12:57pm
It's ok (and debatable if it helps preserve the batteries longevity) to drain it down to the point where the laptop goes into standby. You just do not want to drain it all the way down to zero.
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post #8 of 9
9/17/06 at 4:55am
thats happend to my toshiba and my brothers toshiba
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post #9 of 9
9/25/06 at 11:16am
I own a P100-188 and I leave it plugged into the power supply all day and the battery doesn't even begin to heat up never mind overheat. On this model you don't have an option to remove the battery as one of the notebooks rubber feet is moulded into the battery casing! It's mostly used as a desk top replacement but I do switch to battery power at least once a week and let it run down until it reminds me to switch to AC power... I'll let you know in a year or so if this was the right way to treat the battery or not LOL.
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