Stop laptop battery from charging beyond certain point

[cyberfish]

Just one question... How many of you have actually worked in a hardware service position to have anything but theoretical knowledge of this user scenario? Seriously.... Other than your best friend's, brother in law's cousin having a problem... what is your basis for answering here?

You are aware that working in a hardware service position is not the only way to get "anything but theoretical knowledge"? For example, using a battery powered product will give you very practical knowledge, too. So will experimentation results.

Lithium batteries are very well studied. Can you provide any scientific literature (experimentation record) that supports your point? It seems like every single one of them disagrees with you. I guess they must be all wrong because only you have practical experience?

[CommonTater]

You are aware that working in a hardware service position is not the only way to get "anything but theoretical knowledge"? For example, using a battery powered product will give you very practical knowledge, too. So will experimentation results.

Let me give you an example of the difference between "I own a toshiba laptop" and "I'm responsible for mantaining 250 toshiba laptops"... If you owned one of the ones we were working with you would blame yourself when you accidentally pushed the power plug into the case while trying to connect the charger... However, if you had to maintain 250 of them you would be able to identify it as a design flaw because you saw it often enough to recognize genuine problems... and you would be able to design a correction (a small metal bracket in this case) to apply as a solution.

Your experience with 1 or 2 devices is not going to be the same as someone's experience with an entire line of them... and it's outright foolish to think it will.

Lithium batteries are very well studied.

My point exactly...

These guys know what they're doing. Think of all the research, testing and engineering skill at play here... We're talking entire teams of engineers who've put in a cumulative total of work probably best measured in centuries to bring this new technology to market... Do you really think they're going to get stupid at the last minute and design a charging circuit that somehow negates the benefits of their invention?

Seriously ... think about it.

Look... I see this all the time. It's a known issue in the electronics industry. Diplomas do not confer either the depth or the breadth of practical experience that is gained by being in the field with the end product. All the electronic theory in the world is not going to give you the true sense of how a product behaves in day to day use... That information comes from the people who maintain the equipment. But a great many people with nice diplomas and limited experience still feel qualified to profess greater knowledge. In the technical/service side of the industry we literally label engineers like that as having "just enough knowledge to be dangerous". (And, trust me, you do not want to know how we refer to people with *no* training who think they're smarter than us.)

Look at your various ideas here... A blue tooth controlled relay? Really... At what point did you become smart enough to second-guess all the accumulated wisdom that went into the design of one of these products? By what means do you know better?

As a service manager I could always tell the good engineers from the hacks... The good ones would come to me and ask how their product is performing in the field. The hacks would come to me and try to tell me how to do my job.

Which do you want to be?