OT: Weird Laptop Battery Problem

[Alejandro Imass]

On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Lennart Sorensen
<lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 06, 2011 at 12:02:07AM -0400, Alejandro Imass wrote:
>> Apparently if you drain the newer Lithium-ion to zero they simply die
>> and can't even be re-charged. This happened to me with a relatively
>> new external (and quite expensive) APC battery. The guys at APC said
>> it was because I left it uncharged for a few hours and it was exactly
>> what happened! I drained it whilst working on a plane and forgot to
>> charge it that night. Next day: dead.
>
> What kind of APC battery?
>
> APC UPS batteries are lead acid and certainly don't have any such issue.
>

Universal external Laptop battery, it comes for adapters for most (if
not all) laptops and uses Li-Ion batteries. It originally cost like
$250 in a Brookstone though I later saw it for like $200 at Best Buy.
Mine was just like this one:
http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=upb80i

I worked great for a few months until I let it discharge completely
and failed to charge it within a "reasonable" time-frame. The APC
folks said that whilst you can fully drain the battery and that's fine
(though not recommended), the problem arises when it's not charged
almost immediately after drained. For example if you drain the battery
and don't charge it after a day or two. They also noted that this was
a problem in all Li-Ion batteries, not just this one.

With Ni-Cad batteries it was the other way around because they had a
memory effect and actually needed to be fully drained before charging.
With Li-Ion it seems that fully draining the battery and leaving it
like that for a few hours simply damages the battery and it cannot be
undone.

-- 
Alejandro Imass

> --
> Len Sorensen
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