Laptop recommendations please

[ColinJ]

If you are nearly always on the mains, I believe it's better for the battery to run with it disconnected.

What I would do is discharge it to about 70 percent then take it out.

Then put it back in for a charge every couple of months.

In my case [forgive the pun!] the battery is not officially user-removable. It can be got at (as shown in the video that I posted) but it isn't something that you would want to do unless absolutely necessary.

The battery conservation mode which I enabled effectively does what you suggest though. It charges the battery to 60% and switches to running on mains power.

I never switch the laptop off - I just close the lid to make it 'sleep'. It uses a very small amount of power to keep it going when sleeping so eventually the battery would need a small charge to bring it back to the 60% threshold. I reckon that would be no more than once a week.

Li-ion batteries can last a long time if you don't overuse them (repeatedly cycle them from full charge to flat). I have been using my Android tablet every day for 8 years and its battery still holds a good charge. I usually recharge it at 50-70% and rarely below 40%.

 

[postman]

Laptop recommendations. Never hit them with hammers.

 

[ColinJ]

Laptop recommendations. Never hit them with hammers.

And if they have HDDs rather than SSDs (ie old fashioned DELICATE hard disk drives), don't slam the lid shut and throw the laptop on the sofa while it is still shutting down. On a family visit...

Niece: "Right, I'm off out." Slams laptop lid shut and tosses device onto the sofa

Colin: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, don't do that!!! The hard drive is still spinning and they are very delicate. You will break it!"

Niece: "Yeah, whatever... I do it all the time. No problemo!" Off she went.

ColinJ: [Muttering under breath] "You'll see!"

Next day...

Niece: "Ok, I'm going to the shops. Anybody want anything?" Slams laptop lid shut and tosses device onto the sofa

Colin: "I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THAT!"

Niece: "STOP WORRYING ABOUT IT!" Off she went.

ColinJ: [Muttering under breath] "Honestly, you bloody well WILL see!"

I finished my visit and went home. A month passed...

Niece switches laptop on... Click, click, click, whirr, whirr, clunk, BLEEP - a box pops up on screen 'FATAL DRIVE ERROR'!

Niece, on phone: "Er, uncle Colin - you know about computers. How do I get it working?"

Colin: "Take it to a computer shop and pay them £100!"

I was wrong... They charged nearer £150!

 

[Mike_P]

Never upgrade the memory, done it twice on laptops well out of warranty and both they stopped working shortly after, presume the extra power was much for some aged components.

 

[ColinJ]

I just ran the battery checker... The battery is rated at 46 Wh but a full charge now is only giving it 41.64 Wh so it has lost about 10% of its capacity.

I just read that the battery monitoring software needs the battery to be fully discharged then fully recharged once every few months for the reading to be accurate. I just did that and the software now reports that the capacity is currently 43 Wh so it has actually only lost 6.5% of the original capacity. That's not bad.

 

[Mike_P]

Bought a new laptop as mine is plainly failing, usb and sd slots work when they want, its running far hotter than it use to and now on its second battery which is rapidly discharging. Anyone have any recommendations on program transfer software?