Best ways to keep your laptop battery charged

A laptop battery will eventually lose its power even if the laptop is off.
And there's no way to keep it charged all the way.

It is good practice to "cycle" the battery periodically; configure your battery monitor to neither standby nor to hibernate, but to shut down your laptop at something like 2 or 3% remaining power (consult your laptop's documentationif unsure how to do this), set your power/screensaver options to "Presentation" (no screensaver, nothing shuts off on idle), disconnect from mains power, and let the battery exhaust itself. Leave the machine shut down for an hour or so, then reconnect to mains power. The procedure needs no input from you, and can be done overnight if you wish; just plug back into mains power and reboot when you're ready.

Incidentally, while allowed to shut off displays and to go into "standby" on idle, none of my machines are shut down other than as required for maintenance while they're at home.

Okay, thanks. I'll do that.

Cycling your battery from time to time may or may not be a good idea (I don't personally do it), but Li-Ion batteries (which almost all laptops from the last 5+ years use), as opposed to NiMH & particularly NiCd batteries, don't really ever need to be drained as far as I know.

Nickel-Cadmium (Ni-Cd) batteries definitely should be fully discharged before use as they are very prone to the "memory effect" where the total capacity of the battery is reduced each time the battery is recharged. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if no laptops using only NiCd batteries have been produced in the last decade.

Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) batts aren't nearly as affected by the memory effect, & Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) batteries (which are the latest & best technology for laptops) don't suffer from it at all. Their life will still get shorter over an extended period of time, but not because they aren't getting fully discharged.


They can. NiMH batteries in particular are susceptible to this, typically losing about half their charge after a month of non-use.