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I just got my laptop's battery replaced and read a bit about how to prolong it's life. Most people say that the best choice is not to charge it will 100%, but rather to 60-80%. My battery is quite powerful (8 hours declared), so it's okay for me to charge it like this, and I mainly work plugged in.

In Windows which ships with the laptop I can see the way to set the threshold, and there is even the auto mode, where system decides itself how much to charge. Is there something like this in Ubuntu?

N.N.
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lyuba
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    Do you know what type of battery it is? (I remember hearing that this 80% idea was a myth, but I want to make sure) – Stefano Palazzo Jan 19 '11 at 13:44
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    I have found that what usually kills off my battery life is working plugged in regularly. Just as a suggestion, I would try and run on battery for at least an hour or two every time you use your laptop. I found that doing this actually does help the lifetime of the battery. – Will Jan 19 '11 at 13:49
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    This question is very similar to the question asked here http://askubuntu.com/questions/21351/application-to-display-battery-info by me. – nik90 Jan 19 '11 at 14:08
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    And as I explained ( with more detail ) in that question, batteries prefer to remain fully charged, not 60-80%. The closer you get to zero, the more often that happens, and the more time spent there, the more wear and tear the battery suffers. You can see this in any battery manufacturer's data sheets. – psusi Jan 19 '11 at 14:54
  • Psusi, how could you comment this article? http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries Does the temperature of the battery change depending on the percentage of it being charged? – lyuba Jan 26 '11 at 09:07
  • @lyuba No. Higher temperatures will shorten the life of the battery, and the battery generates heat ( which will raise its temperature ) when charging and discharging, but just sitting at a given state of charge has no affect on temperature. The part of the article about float charge is also a bit misleading because all batteries don't like long term full voltage ( or over voltage in the case of 4.35v ) float charge; once they are full the charger is supposed to shut down to prevent premature wear on the battery. – psusi Feb 06 '11 at 00:16

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For IBM Thinkpads there exist a module tp_smapi to control charge thresholds. It you fix the start charge threshold at 60% and stop at 95%, the battery will charge upto 95% and stop charging (It will not discharge either). Once the AC power goes off the laptop will discharge but will not start recharging, even if plugged into AC, till the battery has discharged below 60%. Its useful feature to increase battery life as Li-ion batteries are best stored at 40%. If you don't often go off AC power the battery will remain at 40-60% as per threshold set by you and hence last for a long time. I'm not aware if the same module would work for other laptops as well. Sam - IBM Thinkpad - R52/R60.

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You can install Dells Airplane manager(Download) when you battery is 80% charged open it and enable airplane mode so now the laptop will not charge and run off ac power.

Lincity
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  • Isn't it easier just to plug it off?.. – lyuba Jan 20 '11 at 19:21
  • that would discharge the battery.dells airpalne manager will stop the charging and take the power from ac.also there is nothing hard in clicking "enable aiplane mode" – Lincity Jan 21 '11 at 11:17