Long live your laptop battery

Anyone who has ever cared for a laptop knows the pain of an ailing battery. According to Grist.com technology columnist Umbra, there may be a way to avoid that tragic end and prolong the life span of your power source. It involves being just a little more vigilant about when and how you charge your battery.

Your battery life depends on something called depth of discharge, which Umbra defines as “how much of a battery’s power has been used up: 40 per cent depth of discharge means it has 60 per cent of its life left, and 100 per cent means you’ve let the battery run dry.” If you’ve made a habit of letting your battery drain to zero before plugging it back in, you’ve likely already done damage to your battery.

Here’s an example. Say you let your battery run dry before recharging it back to 100 per cent. Doing that habitually means you might get roughly 300 to 500 discharge cycles before it will be time for a replacement.

Here’s how to avoid it, instead of waiting until your battery is gasping for juice from an outlet, allow it to dip to about 40 per cent remaining use before plugging it back in. By not exhausting the power, you put less strain on your battery and might be able to get as many as 4700 discharges out of it.

The other tip? Don’t recharge your battery to the full 100 per cent. Once it dips to 40 per cent, boost it up to about 80 per cent and then pull the plug.

A battery that’s engorged with power tends to be more stressed, shortening its life span. And if you’re chained to a desk and know you’ll be running AC power on a regular basis, it’s probably best to remove the battery entirely if you can.