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Have a laptop with a short battery life? Here's how to extend your laptop battery life
Recharging you laptop battery:
Battery life will improve when you exercise your notebook battery. To exercise a Ni-MH battery, first discharge the battery with...
.... a blank floppy inserted into the floppy disk drive before turning the laptop on. Turn on the laptop computer it will now get stuck seeking a start track on the floppy disk. Allow the laptop to remain in the "stuck" boot mode until the laptop battery runs out and turns itself off. Finally, charge your notebook battery until fully charged. Repeat several times for laptop batteries that have short run times. If this doesn't improve the runtime then it's time to replace the battery.
If your laptop does not have a floppy disk you will just have to do something non-critical until the laptop powers down due to low battery power, once it does this start it again without plugging the notebook computer into power, it will boot for a while then close down, continue this until the laptop battery power is completely drained.
Note: I've found that some Li Ion notebook batteries will not want to charge if left stored for long periods of time. You can try to fool the internal electronics by inserting the battery into the battery bay until the battery just makes contact with the laptop terminals and the charging icon appears on the laptop's status display. If the battery stops charging within seconds - remove and reinsert. You might have to do this 10 - 20 (or more) times before the laptop battery has enough charge to power up its internal electronics and will begin a normal charge cycle.
Another trick on a laptop battery with very short charge time is to plug into a different voltage than usual. ie 110v if you usually use 240v this can cause the battery memory to fool itself into trickle charging, I did this on a trip to the US from Australia, I gained another good 3 months from the notebbok battery when I returned to Australia.
Finally you can head to your local electronics store and purchase some replacement internal batteries if you are handy with a soldering iron and your laptop battery does not have a 'intelligent' power chip. Gently crack open your laptop battery and remove the cylindrical batteries and take them in to get the same specification batteries. Take the batteries home and repack the laptop battery yourself.
Alternatively you can look in your yellow pages for laptop battery reconditioners or notebook battery reconditioners. These guys will repack your battery for you and it is often much cheaper than buying a new laptop battery from the original supplier.
When charging a new laptop battery always charge it fully before turning it on, then fully discharge it. Repeat this cycle 3 times. It makes a huge difference to the usable life of your batteries.
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