And exactly how do you know that?Originally Posted by cyberfish
Because some faux-authority "battery university" website said so?
In fact the common sense goal --and the one most appear to have followed-- is to maximize per-charge usage time *without sacrificing the over all longiveity of the battery pack*.
Once again... Having been in a position to observe battery life issues across hundreds of machines, I've not yet seen the case where running on AC power in any way degrades the longivity of the battery pack. Which is why post #1 on this topic labeled it a "non issue"...
I seriously don't know what I can say to make you hear me. At this point I figure you're just arguing for the sake of arguing.
No, that's called "making a mistake".That's what most people want, just not what I want, so I want to change it. This is not "second guessing". This is optimizing for another goal.
Again... from experience with hundreds of notebooks... I've seen no evidence whatsoever that simply plugging them in on AC power and using them is going to have any meaninguful negative impact on the battery pack. It is not inherrently damaging to bring them to a state of charge and let them sit there, as you call it "in storage" while the machine operates dominantly from AC power. Modern charging circuits no longer continuously charge battiers... they are smart enough to shut off when the battery reaches about 95% of it's safe charge (and yes that number is taken from the service manual of the machines I worked with).
In the scenario where the machine is used mostly on batteries, yes the battery life both overall and per-charge is going to slowly degrade with time. It is not possible to charge a battery without doing a little bit of damage, it's an expected fact of life. The "I use mine on batteries every day and after a year I only get 1/2 the specified time" problem does in fact occur and, yes, it is expected. As everyone here has cited there is a limit to how many times you can drain (under rather heavy current, btw) a battery pack then recharge it... They will eventually fail and that is an expected and ordinary part of that usage scenario.
You are talking about one -- ONE -- charge... not hundreds.
I am telling you this is a non-issue, just use the thing...
What it appears you've gotten yourself hooked into --and cannot let go of-- is a bunch of BS magically transplanted from the days of NI-CAD batteries, recharged through an always-on circuit that did indeed damage the batteries. (As I tried to tell you, right up front)
Oh boy. If only I had a penny for every time some wet-behind-the-ears rookie tried to argue that experience means nothing in the face of pure science... only to call me on his *first* service call all humble asking me to come to his rescue.Engineering is applied science. Science is about what is the truth. Having 30 years of experience doesn't make you any more correct. So can we get over that and start talking about facts and verifiable knowledge, instead of using "I have years of experience" to counter any argument?
In fact one such call sticks in my mind as a perfect example: I was called to a location in another city a 1 hour drive away regarding a copy machine that simply would not come to life, the panel was lit up, the counters initialized but it would not make a copy. Our newly graduated, "I know more than all of you" genius technician had replaced every single board in that entire machine and was about to start pulling out motors and lamps... Everything in his totally theoretical knowledge base was telling him it was a controller board problem... but with his complete (embarrassing) lack of experience, he never once thought of the rather obvious: a blown motor fuse. 2 technicians, 4 hours drive time, 7+ hours of labour... and all that machine needed was a 3 amp fuse that would have been the first thing anyone with even minimal field experience would have checked.
Like him, you are on the edge of a very eye opening experience... You are about to discover that all your fancy engineering training (and yes I've been through it all too) doesn't count for squat when you get out in the real world and start seeing how things actually behave in the customer's hands.
Another example, this time pure engineering... The head office boys designed a new cash register, based on the Z-80 processor, marvelous machine, a real "top of the line" device for it's day with features many cash registers don't have, even now. When put into production and out into the field we started getting dozens of calls about "lock ups"... the machine would just die while the cashiers were using it. As soon as we realized this was a common occurance, happening sometimes 10 and 15 times a day, the engineers went after it full bore... They analysed the software, they did current checks on the power supply, they checked voltages and even did emulations of various failure modes. *Nobody* could explain it... In the end it was one of our techs from a branch office, 30 years in the field and near retirement who solved the problem... by placing an insufoil shield over the CPU chip. It seems nobody except this guy even considered the possibility of RFI from nearby transmitters causing lockups. Were it not for this one tech's extensive field experience, the problem would never have been fixed.
As is the case with many beginning programmers we see on these boards... your books and statistics do not tell the whole story. The truth is that your degree in engineering has given you little more than a starting point, the first step into a very broad field where the actual experience you gather will be your best teacher.
Only a complete fool would value textbook knowledge over the lessons of experience... and someday (hopefully) very soon, you're going to find that out the hard way.... We all do.
I learned this lesson the hard way, as do most techs and engineers... Now, many years into this, I still learn from new experiences every day, my textbooks sit dusty on the shelf, used only rarely when I need to look up some obscure formula. Your "Science" doesn't hold a candle to the reality of what goes on in the real world, my friend.
