The Watering Hole

I mostly use the laptop plugged in (in fact it has never been off my desk in the living room). I am thinking it is better to remove the battery and just charge it every month or so and then remove it again until the next charge or when I need to take the computer out.

Any advice appreciated.

The best way is to switch the mains power off when you are upto 100% charge and run it on battery only until you are down to 5% and the switch on mains power again. This will keep the battery healthy.  Running it on mains all the time with the battery in situ ruins the battery's capacity to hold a charge for any length of time.

Well I have the high resolution screen, and it dims when it runs on battery. So that is out of the question. I have set them monitor in every way to disable that, but it still dims on battery only boot.

DBM,

Jon is right.  My daughters laptop does the same thing but all you have to do is turn the brightness back up.  These batteries need to be cycled.  Even with a well regulated charger, it's not good to charge them all the time.  

desertbluesman — Nov 12, 2008Well I have the high resolution screen, and it dims when it runs on battery. So that is out of the question. I have set them monitor in every way to disable that, but it still dims on battery only boot.

If you right mouse click on the desktop and select properties and then select (depending upon the pc/operating system etc) something that says "power" options etc and look for the profile when running on batteries. There should be an entry in there for dimming the screen when running on batteries and you should be able to disbable that so that the screen always runs at full power.
It's difficult to tell you exactly how to do this, epecially where laptops are concerned as they generally have their own power management plugins etc, but once you get past the interface they all basically do the same thing.

yeah, that too!   :)  

Daphne's laptop has a button right on the keyboard.  Push it 3 times and it's back to full brightness.  It's so easy that I've never bothered to go in and do this, but doing this would stop it from changing in the first place.  

Thanks, I alaready did everything as far as the desktop options and video adapter are concerned. I will look and see if the Dell has that magic button

i leave my battery on all the time, never had a problem. they weren't meant to last that long to begin with.

The — Nov 13, 2008i leave my battery on all the time, never had a problem. they weren't meant to last that long to begin with.

If you mean that you leave the mains on all the time with the battery plugged-in.....how do you know you that you don't have a problem?

It definitely will extend the life of the battery enourmously by cycling the charge/discharge of it.  I have an old laptop that is 7 years old now and I have always cycled the battery and it still holds a charge for 4 hours running on full brightness etc.

Jon — Nov 13, 2008[quote author=The Assman link=1226512533/0#7 date=1226534435]i leave my battery on all the time, never had a problem. they weren't meant to last that long to begin with.

If you mean that you leave the mains on all the time with the battery plugged-in.....how do you know you that you don't have a problem?

It definitely will extend the life of the battery enourmously by cycling the charge/discharge of it.  I have an old laptop that is 7 years old now and I have always cycled the battery and it still holds a charge for 4 hours running on full brightness etc.

because when i unplug it which i do from time to time, i get the about the same amount of time on battery power as I did when i first bought it. I just make sure it never drains completely when i take it off the main. 90% of the time its hooked to the main though.