I need to reach back a bit to give you a better overview of my situation. About a month ago I got a new laptop. HWMonitor showed a wear level of already 1% after two days of use and the customer support of my laptops manufacturer told me - via email - that this is fairly normal and that the percentage of wear level can differ because of manufacturer tolerances and software can make the number vary and be as high as 10% (see quote, unfortunately it's in German but I translated it for you).
Der im Testprogramm angegebene Verschleiß beträgt laut den angegebenen Kapazitäten etwa 0,03%. Angegeben ist sowohl die vorgesehene als auch die tatsächliche Kapazität des Akkus. Beachten Sie bei dieser Anzeige, dass die Differenz bereits durch Herstellertoleranzen entstehen kann und die Anzeigen in der Software auch bis zu 10% von den tatsächlichen Werten abweichen können.
The wear shown by the test program amounts to about 0.03% according to the specified capacity. Shown are the designed capacity as well as the actual capacity. Please regard with this indicator that the difference can be the result of manufacturer tolerances and also that the shown numbers in the software [refering to HWMonitor] can differ up to 10% from the actual values.
Now, after about a month of daily use - some days failry heavy, HWMonitor shows me 3% of wear level. I checked with AIDA64 which shows me only 1%. So, I'm really not sure which program to trust (I kinda want to believe AIDA64 since the number there is lower).
Are there any general tips you can give me to reduce the wear on my laptop's battery? I mainly use it at home despite having a desktop PC since the power consumption of the laptop is much lower. I also have the laptop connected to the wall charger all the time. Should I remove the battery when I use it at home when it's plugged in? Should I only charge the battery when it's almost out of power? The manual of my laptop doesn't really give that many tips on how to take care of the battery (besides the usual "don't ever open the battery", "don't throw it into fire", etc.).
I want to avoid buying a new battery every year or so.
Don't expose it to heat & don't charge it over 80%, if you're keeping the laptop stationary for long periods of time remove the battery & run the laptop from the chord.
It follows same principles as all lithium-ion batteries. So, you can apply those to smartphones and most other electronics.
Avoid deeply discharging them. The deeper you discharge, the more it affects capacity. It's better to discharge twice from 100% to 50% than once from 100% to 0%.
Whenever you are not using battery for long periods of time, store it at around 50% charge. Storage at around 50% affects battery capacity the least, and at 0-5% the most, 100% being somewhere in the middle.
I remember that Lenovo had a utility that stopped charging the battery at 50%. Maybe there are some others.
What would you consider "heat"? The CPU heats up to ~45-65°C under middle-heavy load (browsing the web + YouTube, mild gaming like Shadowrun Returns/Dragonfall). The ambient temps are ~28-37°C for the right now and for the next week. I'm ordering a cooling pad this month but for now I put the laptop on little feet to increase the room between it and the wooden surface it's resting on.
Going to remove the battery and run it from chord, as you suggested, since I use it stationary for about 90% of the time.
I actually have software on it that allows me to set % when to charge and when to stop charging.
Should I use that or just remove the battery when I use the laptop stationary, like @Baz suggested? Or both? (setting those values in the software but still remove it when I use it stationary with the charger)
I have it sitting in the middle of my room, next to my bed on a small table. The shades are always semi-/closed, so there's no direct sunlight and a tower-fan is blowing in its direction almost all the time (except at night). Also, the stove is in a different room, so I won't accidentally put the laptop on it ;)
The advantage to removing the battery is that it will be exposed to less heat than connected to a working laptop. Other than that, there's no difference.
Guess I'll use the laptop until the battery charge drops to ~50%, set the software to charge it at ~45% and stop charging at 50%. Then I'll remove the battery and just use the laptop with the wall charger only (powering the laptop down before removing the battery, obviously).
Kay, then I'll still remove it. Gonna tell my mom about this too, since she got the same laptop and only uses it stationary with the wall charger always connected.
No problem. One more thing, even if you use the laptop mostly with the power cord, you should use the battery every once in a while. Just don't leave the battery in a bag, or a drawer for like 6 moths.
Yeah, never gonna make that mistake again. Treated my netbook's battery pretty bad and felt the consequences pretty hard. At the end it discharged as soon as I unplugged the wall charger and was pretty useless.
The thing is I could buy a new battery from the manufacturer's online store but it costs 100€ and only has a warranty of 6months (also, it's only 2850mAh). So I naturally want to make the current one last as long as possible.
Might be a stupid question, but what exactly am I supposed to do when I put the battery in every once in a while? Full charge and discharge until ~50%? I'm asking because I can picture myself sitting in front of my laptop, popping the battery back in, powering the laptop up and sitting there like "Okay, now what?" or "I have no idea what I'm doing"^^
You don't have to fully discharge it every month. Remember that letting your battery run all the way down every so often also helps calibrate it, making for more accurate power display readings. You can just use the laptop till it reaches about 20-10% than charge it back to about 50%. And unplug it. If you're not going to use it for long period of time, leave it at ~40%. Also the less intensive work you do using the battery the better