RE: [Thinkpad] Batteries - what is normal and how to handle

I recently learned that running out the battery is fine - so long as the
battery stays cool. The battery looses capacity when it is charged while
hot. When the system goes out, you immediately take the battery out of the
machine and cool it down. Perhaps put it in the freezer for a while. When
there is no heat coming from the battery, put it back in and plug it in -
however do not run the machine. I usually go one step further and flip the
laptop over to keep the battery as cool as possible while charging. The
manual suggests charging over night so I do this as well. You can even run
a fan over it - but that may be going too far. This procedure has resulted
in no battery capacity loss for me.

Before I would run the battery out - charge - run the battery out - charge
to calibrate the battery, only to loose a third of the initial capacity.
The difference was that I ran the computer on my lap (insulation) while the
battery discharged and charged. Those batteries needless to say got very
hot. Though I followed the suggestion of discharging/recharging from the
manual, I killed the batteries. My new method has been very successful.

George W. Colgrove III
Project Civil Engineer
VTrans, PDD, Structures Section
1 National Life Drive, Drawer 33
Montpelier, VT 05633-5001
george.colgrove@state.vt.us
 
Phone (802) 828-0049
Fax (802) 828-3566

-----Original Message-----
From: Uwe Walter [mailto:walter-l@tm.uka.de]
Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2004 8:21 AM
To: Thinkpad@stderr.org
Subject: Re: [Thinkpad] Batteries - what is normal and how to handle

On Mi, 2004-06-02 at 18:49, Daniel Winkler wrote:
> Is this normal for a brand new battery?

A brand-new Li-Ion battery needs a few cycles to gain their full
capacity.

> Hoping to recalibrate the electronic I let
> the notebook run till it everything went out.

> Does anyone have experiences, if this might be harmful to the batteries
> or if it is really as helpful as someone told me .. ?

Both. ;)
It harms the battery *and* it can recalibrate the internal capacity
meter.

See
http://illuminati.stderr.org/pipermail/thinkpad/2004-March/008870.html
for "my default information" to your questions. ;)

Greetings, UW(e)

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Received on Thu Jun 3 08:50:10 2004