How do I extend the long-term life of my new laptop battery?
Oh, and if you’re buying a new battery for a three year old laptop, it’ll cost about a third of what the laptop did. My laptop battery hass (the things about 4 years old, battery lasts about 2/5ths what it could when I got it) started to die – your comment promted me to check eBay. Brand new (ie., manufacturer’s packaging) batteries for ~$30. I’ think I’m going to go grab one. I guess it depends on how popular/widespread your particular laptop is.
I’m fairly sure that (c) is true, as I have been a lot more careful about charge-cycling (use battery fully, charge fully, and minimize switching from charging/discharging) than I was with my previous battery. This one is still at about 90% of the original capacity after a year. I usually run my laptop with the battery in, on AC power, so if there is a detrimental effect to that, it happens a lot more slowly than power-cycling or improper charging. My advice is to avoid using the battery for just a few minutes. If you use the battery, drain the battery, then recharge once it gets down below 5-7%. Otherwise, keep it on AC power, with or without the battery inside. This has worked well for me.
In addition to the battery university link, I also refer people to the Wikipedia Lithium ion battery page and Apple’s Lithium-ion battery advice.
Sounds good to me, though but not all the time, as it will get hot is simply not true. Your laptop is going to get hot as a function of usage, the only reason this would be connected to being plugged in is if your laptop has a power management function for reduced power consumption (i.e. slower processor clock) to extend battery life.
