Laptop Battery Conditioning and Recycling Laptop Batteries

Buy Dell Laptop Battery

New Laptop Battery Tips: This document explains how we recommend you should fully condition your new laptop battery, by using a very simple charging cycle. This will ensure a long run time from your battery and greater lifetime. It is very important that you fully cycle and 'condition' you battery before you use it. All new batteries need to be fully conditioned in the early stages for at least 8-20 cycles (cycle = one full charge, one full discharge) otherwise you will not get the optimum runtime in hours from your battery. It is very common for customers to believe that there is a fault with the battery when actually they have a perfectly good battery, which simply requires correct conditioning. When you receive your new laptop battery it will be fully discharged and unconditioned. Please do not turn on your laptop computer as the battery will not work straight away. Your battery will normally take 8 - 10 charges and discharges to reach its full capacity. However, your battery will not reach full potential until it has been conditioned at least fifty times. Until then you may experience lower performance. Another common situation you may experience is the LED's and charge indicator on your laptop will not give accurate information until the battery is fully conditioned - it is very common for consumers to believe that their battery is faulty. Please do not blame the battery! Just follow the cycle instructions below. During the first charge, your laptop may indicate that charging is complete after a short period (of approximately 15 minutes). This is to be expected and considered normal; if this occurs, remove the battery from your laptop and repeat the charging procedure. You should then use your laptop as normal (without the mains power adaptor plugged in), until the battery completely runs down. Repeat the above procedure for a minimum of eight times over the course of the next few days. Always ensure you allow your battery sufficient time to get a full overnight charge. What these terms mean Cycle - One full overnight charge and one full discharge without the AC adaptor plugged in. Charge - Overnight charge with AC adaptor plugged in the mains. Discharge - Fully exhausting your battery's power (operating the computer with your fully charged battery in the laptop and the AC adaptor unplugged). Condition - This is the charge/discharge process you must complete. This will increase both the runtime and the lifetime of your battery. Runtime - The period of time your battery will last for.Approximately 577 million household primary batteries (non-rechargeable) were sold in the UK in 1998. These are used in a wide range of everyday appliances such as torches, radios and electric toys. Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) rechargeable batteries are also common in the household, found in equipment such as power tools, camcorders, laptop computers and mobile phones (there is a separate information sheet about mobile phones). A dry cell battery requires fifty times more energy to make than it gives out. There have traditionally been difficulties with recycling technology for general purpose (non-rechargeable) batteries, as efficient separation and collection of the many different kinds of battery is difficult. The battery industry in the UK has now eliminated mercury from their own products, although small numbers of laptop batteries containing mercury are still imported from abroad. Check with the manufacturer of your batteries to see if they are operating a recycling or take-back scheme. This is particularly necessary for NiCd batteries as they are the most hazardous type of battery found in the home.

Care for Dell Laptop Batteries

Lithium Ion notebook batteries wear down because of two factors: 1) active usage in your notebook battery and 2) natural aging of the dell notebook battery. Both will wear down your notebook battery over time; the trick is to minimize their impact while still getting the performance out of your laptop battery that you need. The most important thing to understand about laptop batteries is that they are always losing a small bit of their charge. The hotter the temperature, the faster dell notebook batteries loose their charge. So rule number one is: keep your notebook battery cool. Notebook battery manufacturers store their products at around 60F. (It doesn't help to put them in the refrigerator, and you can damage a battery by freezing it.) The second most important thing to understand about notebook batteries is that their capacity decreases with each cycle of charging and discharging (or usage). By itself, this is not surprising - but when combined with the previous point, it leads to a surprising conclusion. When laptop users leave their laptop battery inside the machine but leave the computer plugged into the wall, the laptop battery is going through a constant charge-discharge cycle. The notebook battery is sitting unused inside the notebook, discharging a little faster than normal because of the notebook's heat. Once its charge level drops to a predetermined level (which is different for each manufacturer), the AC adapter provides extra juice to "top off" the notebook battery. As the laptop battery gets older, it tends to self-discharge a little faster, which accelerates the process even further. Lithium ion notebook batteries normally offer 600 to 800 charge/discharge cycles over 1.5 to 3 years of useful life. When you use your notebook battery as described above, you are needlessly using your supply of recharges. One additional note: many people recall that older notebook batteries on early computers worked best when they were fully discharged before being recharged. While that remains true for Nickel Cadmium technology, today's Lithium Ion notebook batteries work best when they are recharged when they still have 10 to 20% capacity remaining. So if you are using your notebook battery on a long flight, try not to get in the habit of using the notebook battery until it has almost no charge. Your laptop battery literally won't be the same when you re-charge it the next time. Some Guidelines for notebook batteries:1 Remember that new laptop batteries generally arrive in a discharged state; you must charge them up for at least four hours before their first use. 2 Keep your laptop battery cool, but do not put it in the refrigerator or freezer 3 Don't use the notebook battery if you don't have to! Many people keep their laptop plugged in most of the time. They can preserve their notebook battery life by storing the battery outside the laptop in a cool place. 5 Try to avoid running your laptop battery all the way to zero6 Don't charge your notebook battery before long periods of inactivity7 Much as we'd like to sell you more laptop batteries, don't buy spare notebook batteries for later use. The longer you hold them, the less useful life they provide