Re: Battery problems

This is a well known problem with older laptops.  But for the most part
anything made within the last couple years has had some fairly
significant advances in the "battery" department.  Either way, the
basics of it all runs down to -- if you make sure you fully discharge
your battery at least every other day, you should be fine.  If you start
noticing your batteries are getting really hot after your system is
fully charged -- you should take them out.  The best test for that is
have your machine off and let it charge, when the lights that it's
charging are done doing their blinking let it sit in the machine for
another 4 or 5 hours.  Take out the battery at that point -- is it hot? 
slightly warm?  room temperature?   You should be able to pretty well
tell if leaving it in is a bad thing with your system or not.

As for the GRX500/600/700 series, I'm pretty sure the power stops
supplying to the batteries once they are fully charged.  This is
reinforced by the fact that the system BIOS intelligently switches (on
its own) which batter is being used or recharged.

J/


On Wed, 2003-06-04 at 22:51, John Andersen wrote:
> On Wednesday 04 June 2003 09:13 pm, Ken Restivo wrote:
> > I fried a $200 battery by leaving my PCG-F190 plugged in to the wall all
> > day and night, with the battery in it. I was told to NEVER leave a 100%
> > charged battery in the machine, took that advice, and have gotten a good 2
> > years out of the replacement battery so far.
> 
> I think this is good advice, because i've fried a battery that way too.
> We all expect the chargeing circuits to be top notch, and as such never
> to over charge.   But the new NMIH batteries are even harder to
> properly charge than were the older nicads.
> 
> I know that I run the risk of a power failure, but Its a risk I choose to 
> take.