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Battery

General Information

The batteries in Concordia’s laptops are Lithium-Ion Batteries. Unlike diamonds, batteries are not forever. Batteries only last a limited amount of time; with proper care, however, it is possible for a battery to last longer than average.

Currently we are getting about six hours of life from a fully charged battery in the R61 model. The longer we have a laptop model the less battery life we will have on them. Usually after a year a battery only holds half of their cycle. Therefore we encourage battery maintenance to keep your battery performing well.

Battery Performance Tips:

Power Manager

Power Manager is the green battery icon in the Start bar that shows how much battery power is left.

• If you don't have this green battery icon, go to Start > All programs > ThinkVantage > Power Manager then go to Options in the bottom left, and make sure the Show Power Manager Gauge in task bar is checked.

Battery Not Charging?

Towards the end of the battery lives at Concordia University we run into some problems with batteries not charging. Here are a few things we found that helped us determine what was wrong during that time.

• Test Different Power Cords to determine if it is a bad power cord.
• Check your battery settings in Power Manager to make sure you are configured for optimal use.

Extending Battery Life

The Lithium Ion battery pack for the these systems is an intelligent battery. It contains a microprocessor to monitor its capacity. Information of remaining battery capacity is passed to the system from the battery pack, and the system indicates the capacity in 1% steps from 0% to 100% with high accuracy. If the indicator appears to be incorrect, it is recommended that you cycle the battery (fully charge, then fully discharge) three times. This may occur when the battery is over charged or discharged.

To check the status of your battery: the Battery MaxiMiser Gauge in the task tray displays the percentage of battery power remaining.

The rate at which you use battery power will determine how long you can use the battery of your ThinkPad computer between charges. Because each computer user has different habits and needs, it is difficult to predict how long a battery charge will last. There are two main factors:

1. How much energy is stored in the battery when you begin to work.
2. The way you use your computer: how often you access the hard disk, how bright you make the computer display.

How to show the power manager gauge (green battery icon) in the task bar:

1. Go to Start menu
2. Click on All Programs
3. Go to ThinkVantage
4. And then Power Manager
5. Open the Power Scheme tab
6. Click on Options in the bottom left hand corner
7. Check the box next to Show Power Manager Gauge in task bar

Caring for Your Battery

Encouraged

• Recondition your battery once a month to ensure a long battery life.

• Reconditioning is letting your battery run down to less than 3% and then charging it overnight. This will help restore your battery capacity.

• When running on battery power, lowering the brightness of your screen can optimize battery life.

Discouraged

• Do not place your battery (or your laptop) in a high temperature environment, such as a car on a hot day.
  • Do not keep your laptop plugged in all the time with the battery in it. If you use your laptop as a replacement to a desktop take out your battery while it is plugged in for very long periods of time (like more than 48 hours) and store the battery.
  • Leaving a battery in a laptop while using an electrical outlet for long periods of time will keep the battery in a constant state of charging up and that will reduce the life cycle of the battery.
• Things that will affect the way your battery charges:
  • When the computer uses a large amount of electricity from the battery (for example, for using high-end graphics applications), the temperature of the battery and the computer may rise. When this happens the battery will stop charging and use that electricity to run the program. After the program has stopped running and the battery cools down the battery will start charging again.
  • Battery performance will be temporarily degraded if the battery is used in a cold environment.

• This page was last modified 19:29, 10 November 2009.
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