6. Intelligent Charging Technology Lengthens Battery Life

Regular MobilityGuru readers already know from our article entitled "Squeezing More Life Out of Your Notebook's Battery, Part II" that the life cycle of a battery can be substantially reduced if you constantly power your notebook from a wall socket. One reason is that the battery is warmed by the constant high temperatures inside the notebook, which causes the lifetime of a Li-ion battery to sink dramatically. Another is that it's not a good idea to store a Li-ion battery fully charged; rather, it should be stored at a charge level of about forty percent. That limits the pace of battery decline, and also keeps irreversible reduction of battery capacity over time to a minimum. The bottom line is that any battery that's inserted inside a notebook and kept fully charged will have its life cut short.

To counter this well-known issue, LG provides a tool to help users determine how much charge the battery will be allowed to take. If the ntoebook is to be plugged in all (or most of) the time, it makes sense to charge its battery only to 40% of capacity, in the interests of extending battery lifetime as much as possible. Users who actually use the battery can charge it to capacity, to keep the notebook running as long as possible when unplugged.

Settings for maximum charge percentage may be selected in the BIOS...

... or inside the Battery Miser 2005 application within Windows XP.

The primary job of the Battery Miser 2005 tool is to make it simple and easy for users to manage and control energy saving mechanisms. Users can select from a set of power schemes created for specific usage scenarios. For example, one might set the unit at a specific, fixed display brightness level, or disable the sound chip when it's been idle for some period of time.

LG's Power Miser makes it easy to select from effective, application-specific power schemes.

In addition, this tool also provides detailed status information about the battery during both charge and discharge cycles.