Caring for your Battery

Battery Dos

When you first receive your laptop do repeat recharging the battery three times before use. This means you let the battery charge all the way up, then drain all the way down three times. It will create a “memory” of how much life the battery can hold.
Do 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.

Do use the Battery MaxiMiser to select the best extended power scheme for how you use your ThinkPad computer.

The Battery MaxiMizer is the green battery located on your taskbar or you can locate it by going to the Start button and then clicking on All Programs and then going to Access IBM, there you will find the Battery Maximizer Wizard

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.