Breathe new life into your laptop’s battery

With these tips, you can keep your aging battery working for years (and for hours between charges).

By Lincoln Spector / Wednesday, July 28 2010

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Keep it cool
Heat breaks down the battery and reduces its overall life. When you use your laptop, make sure that the vents are unblocked. Never work with the laptop on pillows or cushions. If possible, put it on a raised stand that permits plenty of airflow.

Also, clean the vents every so often with a can of compressed air; you can buy one at any computer store. Be sure to follow the directions on the can, and do this only when the notebook is turned off.

Give it a rest
If you’re going to be working exclusively on AC power for a week or more, remove the laptop’s battery first.
Otherwise, you’ll wear out the battery – constantly charging and discharging it – at a time when you don’t need to use it at all. You’ll also heat the battery up (see “Keep it cool” above).

You don’t want it to be too empty when you take it out. An unused battery loses power over time, and you don’t want all the power to drain away, so make sure the battery is at least half-charged when you remove it.

Never remove the battery while the PC is on, or even in standby or sleep mode; doing so will crash your system and possibly damage the hardware. Even inserting a battery into a running laptop can harm the system. Remove or reinsert the battery only when the laptop is completely off or hibernating.

If you’ve never removed your laptop’s battery, consult its documentation. (If you don’t have that, you can probably find the details online.) The instructions typically involve turning the laptop upside-down and holding a button while you slide the battery out.

Don’t allow the battery to go too long without exercise or to run out of juice entirely. If you go without the battery for more than two months, put it in the PC and use it for several hours, and then remove it again. Also, before you take the laptop on the road, reinsert the battery and let it charge for a few hours before you unplug the machine. Allow the battery time to obtain a full charge before you remove the AC power.

Heal a sick battery
Myth: You can rejuvenate a worn-out battery.

This isn’t the case, strictly speaking. You can’t make degraded lithium hold more electrons than it does now. But if the battery is running out unexpectedly fast, or if your laptop is having trouble figuring out how much power it has left, you may be able to fix the battery’s “petrol gauge” so that it gives you a more accurate reading.

If you suspect that the battery can’t determine whether it’s charged or not, run it through a couple of cycles: drain it, recharge it to 100%, and then repeat. How do you drain the battery? Don’t bother with the settings described in “Don’t run it down” on the previous page. Altering them isn’t safe (since you might forget to change them back), they may not be getting an accurate reading, and they quite possibly won’t let you set the critical battery level to 0%. (If they did, Windows would likely crash.)

Instead, unplug the AC power and keep your laptop running (you can work on it if you like) until it automatically hibernates. Then reboot the PC and go directly to the system setup program. I can’t tell you how to find your way there; each computer is different. Turn on the PC and look for a message that says something like ‘Press the X key for setup.’ Immediately press the designated key.

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