My suspicion on laptop batteries ...

Hi guys,

I decided to start this topic because I've been searching through the web, for someone having the same feeling as I have but couldn't find any.

My opinion is that manufacturers are misleading us on those damn laptop batteries !!

But let me explain how I ended to that conclusion !!

About three years ago, I bought a Compaq laptop. As it was a real bargain and the store was next to my home, I bought the same one about 3 weeks later for a friend of mine that was searching for a laptop too.

As a reasonable and fairly physics-aware man, I know that a battery can't last forever and was expecting its charging cycles to gradually last longer and its uptime in use to gradually get shorter through the years ... but that's not what happened !!!

All was going perfect, with a more than correct uptime, when suddenly, one night about 8 months ago, the battery just "decided" it wouldn't accept being charged anymore !!

As a still reasonable guy, I thought that maybe it was a battery defect or that an electric spike had smoked an inner component during the night.
What started to make me think is when my friend's laptop experienced exactly the same battery "defect", almost exactly 3 weeks after mine : the delay between the first charge of our batteries and the first starting of our laptops !!!

Shall I add that we live about 6,000 km from each other over seas, so there's no possible common electric cause !!!

Next part of the story : my Compaq getting quite old, I decided not to replace the battery and getting a new laptop instead. A brand new Asus, that has 6 months .... and guess what, its battery too has decided last week, not to get charged anymore !!!!

I can swear I've never had a single problem with any desktop PC or any hi-fi component in my home in over 6 years, still all of them are up 24/7.
Never had a single problem with any PSU, any hard drive, never experienced any cell phone battery defect, any AC-DC adaptor problem .... so I don't think that's a mains related problem !!

My conclusion is that laptop batteries have "hard-coded" components that break the circuit after a period of time or a number of charging cycles whatever ..... so that electricity can no longer reach the core where the charge is stored.

It's very clear to me ; on both machines I see a red/orange blinking LED instead of a fixed one and the battery never gets even slightly warm => it doesn't receive any current. That means there is a factory predefined battery lifetime ..... it's a shame !!!

If any of you guys has any information about this, feel free to post it here.

Rico

Indeed it looks like the most logical conclusion to me too .... but I still can't figure out how something as "basic" as a battery, can just get charged normally one day and simply won't accept the least quantity of electricity to pass through it the day after !!!

It's a behaviour I've never seen before on any kind of rechargeable battery that I've known .... have you ?

Usually, as they get old, batteries need to be charged more and more often and last less and less in use. They don't just fail abruptly one fine day.

You're forced to almost destroy the battery pack if you want to open it .... but anyway I think I'm going to give it a try to find the truth about this !!

Rico