Netbook batteries – do we have to format them or not?

There are many arguing if you should format or not the battery of your new netbook in order to make it last longer and work better over time.

First of all, formatting means fully discharging a battery and recharging it afterward. This is usually done the first time you use a battery (or the first couple of times) and then periodically, once each month or so.

The fact is that there are several types of batteries. There are the older ones, NiMh or NiCd. These definitely have to be formatted in the beginning, or else the batteries will become almost useless in just a couple of months. So there’s no argue here.

But the modern batteries use LiIon or LiPo. For these, formatting the first time you use them isn’t a must, but is still recommended. Just as a measure of precaution. Also, you should do a full discharge/recharge cycle each month and you’ll notice a slower fade in autonomy performances in time. But, as i said, this is not absolutely necessary, just recommended.

There are some other myths i would like to solve here too:

• Leaving the battery inside the netbook while using it connected to the power supply will damage it. Well, that’s not true. I see lots of people removing the battery from the laptop while using it on AC mode, but there’s no reason you should do that, it’s just a stupid myth.
• Batteries run out of juice if left unused for a long time. Yes, that’s true, if you plan to leave a laptop unused for a longer time (months or so), it’s better to charge it before that.
• There are different types of batteries on the market, some made by the producers of the netbooks and some by third party companies. The later are cheaper, but i would not advice anyone to use them. They will perform poorer in the best case, and there are even cases when such batteries exploded and injured users. So, always go for the brand name battery, even if it’s more expensive.
• Some netbooks have special battery formatting options in BIOS. You should use this feature from time to time.

And that’s about all I could think off. If you have any other problems or questions, don’t hesitate to ask and I’ll try to help.

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Tags: Acer, Asus, Dell, MSI, Toshiba

Last updated: September 27, 2011 | Published: June 19th, 2009 | See the comments or add yours!