Sunday, February 21, 2010

Battery Myths

"Let's all charge our batteries right before they die!" said the wise man before he died. And thus the followers proceeded to do so in honour of their wise man ever since.

But hah! Sorry for you my friend... but your wise man was off his rocker. You see back when he was a young un they used to have these different kinds of batteries that needed to be fully discharged before they could be recharged. It's kinda like how some people played village games with stones before they invented video games and movies and stuff.

So why is the wise man wrong? Well most devices these days with batteries use a different kind of battery known as Lithium Ion. These little babies prefer to be charged whenever and actually hate to be discharged fully or left in the low power battery ranges. It's bad for them. Practically every mp3 player, laptop and mobile phone uses these now.

These kinds of batteries have one main weaknesses and that's exposure to heat. It's better to keep them cool but with the heat in SL that's kinda hard unless you have AC. Most laptop batteries die fast because when people run them on the mains, the battery remains at full power whilst being heated from the laptop which kills the battery. The more charge in the battery the worse the effects of heat. In fact its recommended to store them in a fridge or somewhere cool to increase longevity... but who can be bothered doing that?

How do you know if it's a lithium ion battery you've got? Open the back and google the serial number. You should find info on the battery. Another method is to see if it has a battery meter - that you know tells you how much battery is left. If it has one... chances are its a lithium ion battery.

Devices where you can't see a battery meter and are requested to keep charging constantly without interruption for X amount of hours even after the first time you charge it are usually not lithium ion batteries. These you do need to wait till the damn thing gets to near death before charging and can't remove it from the charger.

Anyway keep charging those lithium ion batteries whenever instead of waiting for them to die or get to near death. Your battery will be happy.

2 comments:

  1. Good post. Most people still belive the myths from the Ni-MH battery age. Very informative.

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  2. I was not aware of this... eeek, my phone must be cursing me for all those waits-till-death! :/

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