Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

No. Your battery degrades each time there's a cycle of charge->use. If you're lucky, you can do that a few thousand times before you lose much of your battery's capacity. If you leave it plugged in, you aren't losing cycles, so you should do that.


A cycle from say 70% to 80% doesn't wear it out much at all.

The problem with leaving it at 100% is that just sitting at full charge wears it out, it's better to just keep it within 40%-80% than to leave it fully charged.


A 40% depth discharge is going to put way more wear than leaving it at 100%. Unless you want to plug and unplug constantly most users are probably best leaving it plugged while working.

If you really want to, you can do a little bit of good by letting it drop to 40=80% during periods of non-use.


If the indicators are correct, HP's chargers keep the batteries at ~95% (varies between 95-100% all the time). So they're not keeping them fully charged or overcharged, but instead leave some breathing room.


> If you leave it plugged in, you aren't losing cycles

Too bad that some batteries wear out even faster this way because of the heat.


the laptop can run, plugged in, without the battery in it.


Why would there be extra heat if the battery is fully charged? Shouldn't a well designed charge circuit disconnect once the battery hits 100%?


Emphasis on "well designed". The 500€ laptops I've experienced in the past weren't and you could murder the battery like this in couple months, no matter the brand (HP, Dell).




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: