Battery FAQ

The portability of PC strongly depends on its power supply. Laptops have been specially created to be used in battery mode. This kind of power supply lets notebook users to access data while being out of their workplace. All this assumes much importance to the tips listed below. Keeping to a few simple rules will lead to the most complete use of battery abilities and possibly prevent troubleshooting related to unexpected shutdowns.

Choosing

There are three types of main batteries used in laptops:

• Ni-Cd (NiCad, Nickel Cadmium)
• Ni-MH (NiMH, Nickel Metal Hydride)
• Li-ion (Lithium Ion)

Ni-Cd batteries were used in old models and all modern ones use Ni-MH or Li-ion. The third type is the latest, Li-ion batteries are lighter and have enlarged capacity. We recommend to use Li-ion, but make sure that your laptop supports this type*. While choosing batteries, you may also face "RTC batteries", "2nd bay batteries" and "resume batteries".

• RTC (Real Time Clock) is a small round battery which keeps the laptop's system clock running even if it is shut down.
• "2nd bay battery" is an additional battery, which can be inserted instead of CD/DVD drive, in case you have no need in using it (note: only if compatible with the model of your laptop*).
• "Resume" battery lets you replace or remove the main battery, keeping your laptop in stand by mode.

*You can get this information from your vendor's site or by searching it in Google with the model of your laptop as a search string.

Charging and Keeping

• Avoid overcharging. The charge time varies depending on charger and battery type, so overcharging is a common mistake of laptop users. It greatly reduces the battery life and the time of holding a charge.
• Discharge battery before charging.
• New batteries may need a few charge cycles to reach their normal full capacity.
• Do not leave batteries discharged for a long periods of time (more than a month), otherwise it won't hold a charge or won't charge at all. When unused, Li-ion battery should be kept half-charged and Ni-MH battery - fully charged. Remember, that rechargeable batteries loose their charge (self-discharge) while unused, so you should recharge them at least once a month or two.
• Store your batteries in a cool place. They should also be protected from sun rays, water.
• Overheating, dump and static electricity are able to destroy the battery or to decrease its performance.

Power-saving Measures

• Do not use your laptop in battery mode when it is possible
• Turn down the brightness and contrast. Set the screen go blank after 2 minutes of inactivity. Commonly, your screen is the main user of battery power, and high brightness/contrast increases the usage greatly.
• Close all unused windows, deactivate unused processes. The biggest part of software executes regular requests to hard disk drive, which uses a lot of battery power (somewhere about 15%). If you run some "heavy" software (games, media) or multiple windows and there is not enough RAM, the hard disk drive is used too. Installing additional RAM may reduce the power usage.
• Disconnect all PC-cards and external devices, when not in use. This measure can produce a really strong power-saving effect in case you have got many peripheral devices without own power supply.
• Set the optimal power-saving configuration of your operation system and BIOS.