Quote:
Originally Posted by lawleypop
Are you sure?
Because I've noticed a considerable decline in my battery life and the technicians told me it's because I keep it plugged in all the time while the battery's in the laptop...
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Yes, I'm sure. Any laptop purchased within the last 6 or so years has the ability to stop feeding power to the battery once it is charged. I suppose I could be wrong, but I don't think Dell has exclusive rights to this relatively simple technology (I know my laptop has it because it says so in the user manual).
Your battery life can go down for a number of reasons. For example, if you keep your battery charged in your plugged-in laptop all the time, but never
use the battery, it's life will degrade. You're supposed to "exercise" your battery, discharging it and recharging it once every two weeks.
Other things like not defragging your hard drive make your hardware less efficient, making your battery work harder and discharge more quickly. Computers with more RAM will have better battery life because they are more efficient.
Tips for maintaining battery life:
- exercise your battery
- keep your hard drive defragged
- keep your laptop cool (overheating will kill the battery)
- never let your battery completely run out
- use "hibernate" and not "standby". Hibernate actually shuts down the computer, wheras standby uses energy
Also, don't forget that batteries will decline in usability naturally. Sometimes they just age and don't work as well as they used to. My batteries (both my main battery and my backup) used to last for over 6 hours four years ago. Today they last for about 3 hours or so.