Hibernation and Battery Life

One thing people always will ask me off-handily is what do I do with my battery life? Do I keep the battery charged or do I drain it? What about the Hibernate and sleep modes? Are they good to use? Whats the difference?

Well most of these rules apply to different machines- you either have a Desktop machine or a Laptop. Different machines mean separate ways of keeping good battery and system maintenance of course. I'll try to touch on this a little bit in this section.

Battery Maintenance:

Of course this does not apply to a Desktop machine and involves the details in reference to the laptop or Notebook models of "portable" units. Most have a battery size option, which usually ranges from 4 Cell, 6 Cell, 8 Cell or 12 Cell. These of course determine the length in which they can stay powered on in general without being attached to a power cable.

As the 4 Cell would be an hour off power, the others would essentially add one hour accordingly, example the 6 would be 2 hours, 8 would run in the 3 hour range as the 12 should max at 4 hours of charge before having to charge the machine.

Common Questions:

My battery is not seeming to charge right- is the battery dead or what?

Try a calibration. To do this go into your POWER OPTIONS and in the advanced section create a new power option call it CALIBRATE and set all the setting on battery to high.

(To find this Vista user need only type in Power in the START SEARCH then select the power options in the list and for XP users right click the desktop and go to properties and then to screen saver- you'll see power options there.)

Once this is done power down the machine in this while running in this power mode, and unplug your power cable. Restart the computer and hit F10 to enter the BIOS setup screen, once in here do nothing. Let the battery drain, on full option it shouldn't take long at all. Once the machine shuts off from the battery draining, plug in the power and turn on your machine. Go into power settings and change them to your normal setup. Your battery has now been calibrated and should show the correct charge amount and be working fine.

(I have had people HARD RESET and it has fixed everything from NO DISPLAY to BATTERY not CHARGING.)

Sometimes a machine won't charge or start up correctly and this is from the machines temporary start up information getting corrupted. You might want to try a hard reset~

It is easy to do: HARD POWER RESET

Power your computer off, take out the battery and power cable. Hold the power button on for 30 seconds without any power connected. (What this is doing is resetting the STATIC MEMORY chip on the computers motherboard, inside this is the start up information for your machine and sometimes it can get corrupted by other programs. This information will stay as long as there is electricity running to the machine. The machine has a thing called a CAPACITOR that regulates the electricity voltage to everything on your computer- one of these is that STATIC chip. By holding the power button down you are creating an OPEN circuit for the electricity to drain out- thus draining the information kept in that STATIC chip as well.) Once this is completed simply plug in the battery and power cable and restart the machine. Go then to the Internet and go to your Driver page on your manufacturers website and update your BIOS, you should see an updated version there. If you have problems with this I would advise getting them on the phone and helping you walk through it- it takes about 10-15 minutes.

When do I replace my battery?

Most manufacturers only warranty the battery for the first year that the machine is owned and after that you are on your own. If you have tried the above trouble shooting and are experiencing the same problem you may want to contact them to get the battery replaced.

Know that batteries like any other get old and will eventually die and the manufacturer knows this and will only warranty one replacement usually. Batteries depending on their size can range in price from $69.00 up to several hundred. I suggest getting the first one replaced by the company that made your machine about 10 months out and then after that your on your own. A battery with good maintenance should last you 2-3 years without any problems.

Do I charge the battery to FULL when I am going to take the battery out?

My suggestion here is if you have a notebook or a laptop, the battery should not even have to come out accept when needed (doing a HARD RESET). The Lithium Ion batteries are nothing like the batteries of yesteryear that blew up- you can keep your battery in and when its charged it will stop giving it more juice.

Charge the battery to 100% and the system will automatically stop charging it. You can unplug the battery at 50% or even 35% and the new software on these things will pick up where they left off on charging it and not miss a beat. However some do go into a recall do to the batteries manufacture, you can keep up on this information on websites.

More on details concerning the History of batteries is here. <--

Sleep Mode and Hibernation:

On this topic I have but one comment and here it is:

Some manufacturers set the default on your POWER button to sleep or hibernate, and this is not in my opinion a good idea. Go into the power options in the advanced settings and change the power button to shutdown and for vista users there's also one for the power off in the start menu in there too.

Unless you have a desktop, these functions should never be used and turned off. Microsoft has broken the WAKE mode in a lot of the updates and your computer might just go to sleep and not wake up until you HARD RESET or get TECH on the phone.

These functions should never be used on a portable machine. If your walking away from your computer for more than an hour- SHUT IT DOWN. The portable computers (i.e. laptops, and notebooks etc) do not have the proper ventilation and support hardware to properly function on all these hibernate and sleep tools. Why are they an option? Well people that don't know any better would complain if they were not there that's why.

On my desktop, I don't hibernate and I never shut it down. It is a desktop, I can, it's made to RUN all the time if needed and that's what I need it to do- and it does, quite efficiently I might add. Laptops and notebooks are portable! That's what they are built for - not being on ALL the TIME and used on the go. If the constant run machine is what you wanted or a high end gaming machine, or high end anything for that matter- buy a DESKTOP. Use your notebook for around the house, the neighborhood or the country and world, but when your not using it- give it a break and shut it off. I know I am kind of brash, but sometimes it's required~

I look forward to your comments and suggestions, you can leave them below with your email address or contact me at steve@pcspyder.net