laptop batteries

[mutantpoodle]

my current laptop stays on my desk
its old but works just fine...albeit slowing down...

Its always been on mains power and I learned (here) that doing so wrecks the battery, so now it will not charge
not a problem as it remains on mains powersupply'

BUT...

each of the new laptops I am thinking to buy have an ''integrated battery''

so does this mean that if I keep on mains supply it will be on continuous charge and ruin the battery

I reallly dont think that I can be doing with keep unplugging etc to stop the charge

******

and also (sorry) as a total novice...how easy is it to get rid of windows 11 ''S'' mode which stops many much wanted options being available??

a google suggests various methods...some read OK...others scare me badly

[raybarrow]

Hi,
Answer is here. Straightforward job. Did it for a friend with Windows 10. You'll still get the reminder when installing third party 'Non Microsoft Store' software, but you will have the option to install it anyway.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/switching-out-of-s-mode-in-windows-4f56d9be-99ec-6983-119f-031bfb28a307#WindowsVersion=Windows_11
Ray.

[Lootman]

Its always been on mains power and I learned (here) that doing so wrecks the battery, so now it will not charge
not a problem as it remains on mains powersupply'

Did we learn that here?

I have had laptops at home since about 2010. They have been plugged into the mains all that time. The one I bought in 2010 still works and the battery is fine. But I rarely use it since it is on W7.

A long time ago I recall it being conventional advice with battery appliances that you should regularly unplug them and let the charge run down, then recharge them again. But I thought that was very old school advice and no longer needed. So things like my mobile phone and my A/V system remote controller are permanently on charge.

My pet peeve is how it has become harder and harder to remove the battery. On my oldest laptop, you just flip the catch and the battery falls out. In the intermediate one, you have to unscrew the panel and then lever the battery out. On the newest one I can see no way of removing it at all, except by dismantling the entire case.

[Infrasonic]

https://batteryuniversity.com/article/f ... ry-failure

[Urbandreamer]

My pet peeve is how it has become harder and harder to remove the battery. On my oldest laptop, you just flip the catch and the battery falls out. In the intermediate one, you have to unscrew the panel and then lever the battery out. On the newest one I can see no way of removing it at all, except by dismantling the entire case.

Dismantling the case can be easy or difficult depending upon the manufacturer. I would not have an issue with dismantling the laptop if it were easy. IE I had one that had four captive screws to access the motherboard, fans etc.

Lenovo Thinkpads use to be good for this, but Dell seem to have had an idea or two.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/1435860 ... -lego.html

So back to a (hidden) catch to swap the battery. It's just inside the case.

[Infrasonic]

Even with soldered in laptop components it is still possible to replace things, batteries are much easier as there are less contact points involved.

YT is littered with pro repair shop videos who routinely do this stuff - some even get into replacing soldered CPU's/GPU's which is a high end skill set way beyond anything I ever had in my soldering days...

The hard bit is finding a place that will do it economically - I used to have an IT repair place near me who saved my bacon a few times and stopped stuff going to landfill but they shut down years ago.

[James]

My Asus laptop comes with a utility that sets charge for various uses. For full-time desktop work it keeps the battery charged to 60%, which it recommends for extending battery life. Don't know if it does, but there might be third-party utilities that do the same.

[monabri]

my current laptop stays on my desk
its old but works just fine...albeit slowing down...

Its always been on mains power and I learned (here) that doing so wrecks the battery, so now it will not charge
not a problem as it remains on mains powersupply'

Ditto my 16+ year old Dell. I very occasionally run it on (original) battery only.

[Infrasonic]

Ditto my 16+ year old Dell. I very occasionally run it on (original) battery only.

My 25 year old Dell Inspiron still works fine - but if I let it go to the battery only (still the original) it lasts about a minute before powering down...

I can get a generic replacement battery but it's not worth it.
The laptop is worth about £25 on eBay for spares, it cost over £2.5K when new with the RAM maxed out at a whopping 144MB...

It still boots to the desktop pretty quick, lack of OS/app bloat...

[gryffron]

Batteries needing a full discharge applied to NiCads, and the myth of this has lasted way longer than the technology itself.

Li-Ion batteries actually last longest if maintained at a constant 50%. But unfortunately that means they're not acting as batteries at all.

Modern electronic devices have very intelligent charging systems, which cycle cells in order, or use them equally, depending what the battery technology requires. The reports earlier in this thread of smart tech keeping them at 60% sounds very much like optimum Li-Ion life extension where the management systems has detected/user has indicated battery usage is not actually required.

New battery technology, combined with these smart management systems do mean that:
1) Batteries last a lot longer than they did.
2) Replacing the batteries with third party replacements may not help much as the management system may not be able to cope with different battery designs.
Hence the increased tendency to seal them away from unskilled replacement.

Gryff

[Infrasonic]

...
2) Replacing the batteries with third party replacements may not help much as the management system may not be able to cope with different battery designs.
Hence the increased tendency to seal them away from unskilled replacement.

Gryff

I mentioned on another thread that I had to perform a full factory reset on an old Android smartphone (Nexus 5) to get the battery total charge readings and charging progress back to where it was. That was with a new OEM LG 'smart' battery as well, not some third party generic... The actual physical process was easy, a five minute job.

I found out about the reset process in some online electronics article where they had noticed that the readings were off like I had and as he had a full test bench managed to work out what was going on.

These days it's way harder unless you go for a repairable design like a Fairphone (smartphone) or Framework style laptop.

Some of the OEM's are making a bit of an effort to comply with the right to repair legislation that is slowly coming in - it's going to require complete redesigns to get to a stage where a non techie can do it easily though.