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Comment by Ives | Hacker News Reader

Only what you're suggesting isn't actually battery maintenance. In fact, it will decrease the capacity of your battery (by as much as a normal drain-recharge cycle of course).

Cycling the battery will however appear to improve the capacity by recalibrating the internal circuitry. That's still somewhat useful to a user, but much less than battery maintenance would be.

PS: From what I understand this only applies to modern Li-Ion batteries, if you're using different battery technology your mileage may vary. Some battery technologies do benefit from being periodically cycled.

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Maybe I'm not up to speed on the latest developments, but I currently have two laptops whose batteries have essentially been reduced to short duration UPS's.

I should be more pro-active, but I forget, or I worry that I'll discharge right before I need to be charged up. And one sits on a spare table, doing its thing all by itself, much of the time.

They tend to stay plugged in and on overnight. It would be nice if, e.g. once a week or so -- whatever's best for the battery at hand -- the power system could run a discharge /recharge cycle "in the middle of the night" or similar.

In my experience, batteries still have memories (that shrink over time and with lack of cycling), and from what I read periodic cycling is the solution.

If Bunnie can find an acceptable fuel cell option, of course I'm all for that. ;-)

P.S. I think I do at least partway understand what you're saying, that being that rechargeable batteries have a limited number of cycles and tend to loss capacity with increasing cycle count.

However, in my case, it appears to be a lack of cycling that is catching up with me well before the above does.

That's very weird: my laptops stay plugged and on 24/7 for months at a time, and the batteries still last around 2.5 hours. These are 4 year old Li-Ion batteries I'm talking about (they used to last 3 hours when they were new).

Same experience here, i kept my laptop in a socket almost every day for 2 years only bringing it out maybe once a month. The battery was as good as new until i forgot it completely uncharged for 2 weeks when it overnight reduced its 2h capability into more like 2 minutes.

Oh yeah, that kills them pretty fast. I've had the same experience with my backup cellphone and mp3 player, had to buy new batteries.

Hmm. Then maybe I'm ascribing my problem to the wrong behavior. I wonder whether I inadvertently left my problem children discharged for too long, at some point.

I've gotten reliable service out of my mobile phones, but laptop Li ion batteries continue to feel (for lack of a more consistent and rational/analytical approach, on my part) like black magic, to me.

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