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"Best practices" (?) with laptop battery driving me crazy (lemmy.ml)

submitted 8 months ago by zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.ml

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Ok, well, to start with, my Lenovo X1 Carbon 10th is known for not having the greatest battery life.

Despite this, to preserve battery health, I have notifications set to warn me when a charge goes under 20% or over 90%, so that I either plug in or unplug when I get them, which TTBOMK constitutes "best practices." Very possibly I'm just getting old and getting lost too deeply in whatever I'm doing, but I feel like I'm constantly getting these notifications, and they're really starting to get on my nerves!

I've tried tlp and auto-cpufreq without any noticeable difference in performance, and usually I'm on "Power Saver" in Mint.

Mrs. Erinaceus has a gaming laptop and just keeps it plugged in all the time, battery health be damned. Is that what I should do? Maybe time to get a new battery? Or is there just some way to tell it to stop charging and leave it plugged in?

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[–] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

You have a number of options...

Your Lenovo is supposed to have charge limiting capabilities that are configurable in the UEFI. If it's not configurable through the UEFI interface, the Thinkpad Vantage Windows app has the ability to set charge limits on most of Lenovo's laptops and settings made there will likely persist when running Linux.

There are also charge limiting capabilities built into TLP that may work, as well as a specialized Thinkpad kernel .

If all else fails you can protect the battery using an inexpensive smart plug that's controlled by the OS. I have an HP laptop that lacks any kind of battery management capabilities and I've set it up so it maintains the battery charge at 80%. Linux controls the plug with HTTP commands that are triggered by configurable charge levels. It works well.

[–] Admetus@sopuli.xyz 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It won't help if you're not on gnome but I have 'preserve battery' enabled' for something like 70-ish percent. I also have an extension that makes the battery indicator disappear when it's plugged in. It actually helps to make me think less about it.

Anyway, hey there fellow Buddhism mod!

[–] zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

As the Tathagata Himself might say, "All conditioned phenomena (including laptop batteries) are subject to dissolution." 🙏☸️

[–] Admetus@sopuli.xyz 2 points 8 months ago

😂 Excellent analogy, totally in line with the teachings 🙏

[–] paper_moon@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I don't have a Lenovo, but a Dell Latitude that i use like a desktop, mostly plugged in next to my couch. In the bios you can set it to optimize the battery and charging for 'primarily AC usage', as well as set a percentage to limit charging, I think I have it set to 85%, I would assume you can do the same on a Lenovo.

I wouldn't worry too much about it past that, if leaving it plugged in all the time is convenient, just do that. You could also probably buy a new battery on eBay and replace it if your battery is actually shot and you want better life.

[–] zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago

Unfortunately, and somewhat surprisingly, there does not seem to be anywhere in the BIOS to set thresholds on my Lenovo.

[–] zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

@spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works, @Admetus@sopuli.xyz, & @paper_moon@lemmy.world what power levels would you suggest I set if I'm planning on keeping my laptop plugged in most of the time? In the past I've done 20/90, but I think I read somewhere that 40-50% is best for long-term battery health.

[–] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

How long do you need the battery to last? My personal experience limiting a Dell convertible tablet to an 80% charge and keeping it plugged almost all the time was the tablet failed before the battery did. After 7 years the Dell battery utility still showed very little degradation and the battery hadn't swelled at all.

I have multiple laptops (a couple used as servers) and mostly keep them at a 75% charge.

[–] zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago

The drama continues at https://lemmy.ml/post/35026669