Dell Battery maintainence

Niketh.mg

The following link is to Dell's battery FAQ, I have included a couple questions from the FAQ that is similar to your questions.

www.dell.com/.../batteries_faq

Q I generally do not unplug/undock my notebook. Does this hurt the battery?

A No, the battery has built in controls which stop the charging process when the battery is full

Q Should I totally discharge, then recharge my Dell laptop battery occasionally to make it last longer?

A No, discharging and charging does not increase the life of a Lithium Ion technology battery.  

You can keep the battery in the system and plugged up with the AC adapter as long as you would like.

Since you have a lithium Ion battery you don’t have to totally discharge the battery, Lithium Ion batteries don't have "memory" problems like older battery technologies did.

Notebooks are at very low energy usage in sleep mode, even if the battery was to go out, the data on your system should be saved.  If you are really concerned though, simply turn the system off before leaving it.

I hope that this helps

TB

Hi

Thanks a lot for that .. Fair enough with the DO's

Can you give me some insights into the DONT's ?? I would be very grateful for your help...

The two biggest don'ts:

DON'T leave the battery in the system if it's on AC power most of the time.  Yes, the charging stops, but the heat generated by the system will prematurely age the battery.

DON'T deep-discharge the battery - ever.  

Heat and deep discharges are the two biggest killers of lithium ion batteries.

Store the battery in a cool dry place and recharge once a month.

Leaving the battery out but no charging for years will result in a dead battery also.

You get 300 to 500 cycles from a battery typically which is why all batteries have a 1 year warranty max.