I almost never use my (Dell) laptop on battery power. I’ve taken the battery out and put it on the shelf. Question: should I put the battery in the computer to recharge occasionally? If so, how often? Why?
Batteries are expensive, which is my reason asking this question. I don’t want to ruin it.
Here are the battery storage recommendations from Dell:
I don’t know about your machine specifically, but many battery + AC powered devices specifically caution not to operate them from AC with the battery removed. Read your owner’s manual.
I do know that I use my Dell laptop on AC 95+% of the time. It’s battery will now only last about 15 minutes from fully charged to dead. So it appears that they weren’t kidding with their item 1 in the excerpt posted above.
In my experience notebook batteries degrade over time whether used or not. It may fail faster being topped off continuously in a plugged in notebook, but don’t expect close to 100% function in a stored 3 to 5 year old notebook battery that has never been used.
As a side note the great thing about having a battery is that you don’t lose power when the AC goes off. That data saving feature is reason enough for me to keep the battery in all the time regardless of potentially shortening it’s life somewhat.
Hm. I wonder if that is a case of being over-protective with regard to computer safety. In the event of a power surge, the power adapter is more than adequate to absorb the shock and continue functioning.
Hell, even in a power outage, you can get about 3-5 seconds of power from the brick alone. I suppose that won’t help you save and shut down, though…