Laptops / Games / Fedora & battery life

[M.Hockings]

> On Sun, 8 Feb 2004, 
>M.Hockings wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I think that most modern laptop batteries are "smart", that is they have 
>>a chip that tries to keep track of the battery's available power.  If 
>>you don't completely discharge the things once in a while they kinda 
>>forget about the rest of the battery.  Going from memory I think the way 
>>to recover some of the lost capacity is as follows.  Power off the 
>>machine, then power it back on to the power on password or hold it in 
>>the bios setup or whatever until the battery completely dies.  Then plug 
>>it in and let it completely charge.  That should help calibrate the 
>>chip.  I seem to recall reading in the specs for one laptop about how 
>>long the battery would last when new and how long when 1 year old.  It 
>>was diminished by a significant amount.
>>
>>Mike
>>    
>>
> Joel Jaeggli wrote:
>
>Batteries wear out. discharging lithium-ion or polymer batteries to the 
>end of their usable charge is a good way to damage them faster...
>
>to quote some motorola engineers: 
>
>The relationship between DOD (depth of discharge) and cycle life is
>logarithmic. In other words, the number of cycles yielded by a battery
>goes up exponentially the lower the DOD. Research studies have shown that
>the typical cellular phone user depletes their battery about 25 to 30
>percent before recharging.  Testing has shown that at this low level of
>DOD a lithium-ion battery can expect between 5 and 6 times the cycle
>numbers of a battery discharged to the one hundred percent DOD level
>continuously.
>
>http://www.motorola.com/ies/ESG/testlab/article1.htm
>

I did not say to do it continuously,  just as a way to reset the battery 
chip.

I believe that the recommendation with IBM Thinkpads is to do it monthly 
though I can't find the doc right at the moment.

Mike