<p>I don’t think that laptops are even intended to last any more. I had a Toshiba that lasted 7 years – from 2007 to 2014 – but by the end it was limping along so slowly that it probably wasn’t worth owning. When its hard drive failed I bought an ASUS for myself – but the ASUS has a sealed-in battery. OK, so now I have a computer with a battery that cannot be replaced by the user. I’m thinking I probably bought new batteries for that Toshiba every couple of years, and I also replace the keyboard more than once - and I also added extra RAM on my own. </p>
<p>I don’t think ASUS has come up with an indestructible, permanent battery. But I’m figuring that the battery might last 3 years, and I can get a replacement computer in 3 years. For me, the computer is a business expense. The first computer I bought for my law office in 1980 cost $10,000 and it ran off of two floppy disk drives - I think each could store 56 kb. </p>
<p>One of the things I like about Office 365 & the cloud storage is it makes it easier to swap out computers. The thing that deterred me from replacing the Toshiba wasn’t the cost of replacement, it was thinking about the hassle of moving all my files from one machine to the other and re-installing all my software. Now that’s pretty much a non-issue. </p>
<p>It sounds like your Toshiba was of a slightly earlier period to the one I examined and found to have had a manufacturing defect which contributed to the battery issues you described. Seems like the power jack had such poor workmanship it caused periodic power surges which probably factored into the frequent battery replacements and culminated in a totaled motherboard. :(</p>
<p>Lithium-ion laptop batteries usually have a max life cycle at 100% charge of 400 recharge cycles or 3 years…whichever comes first. After one of those is reached, the battery will continue to hold charge, but lose some capacity each year until it no longer holds enough charge to be usable. </p>
<p>Of course, this is assuming the batteries aren’t subject to suboptimal conditions like being subjected to/stored in high heat conditions, being kept plugged in 24/7*, overcharged due to defective/malfunctioning power jack/sensors, etc. </p>
<ul>
<li>A reason why I agree with you that sealing up batteries inside the laptop case is a stupid idea unless they intended to do that for planned obsolescence. Unfortunately, Apple and other manufacturers have been doing this for the last few years with some/all models.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>Wow, cobrat. Who puts a coke can on top of the tower when there’s a perfectly good desk surface right there? Seems like the guy could have been fired for stupidity regardless of the computer casualties.</p>
<p>Cobrat, I don’t think that the batteries on my Toshiba had any problem that was beyond expected. As mentioned before, that was a machine that lasted me 7 years until the hard drive finally failed. I had to replace the battery once or twice during that time- I really don’t remember because it is something that I would expect to do every once in a while. </p>
<p>It’s not that the batteries ever stopped working - it’s just that they get to the point where they aren’t holding a charge long enough for my comfort level – so typically if it seems that the battery is running down really quickly,in the past I’ve just gone online and ordered a new one. I actually owned quite a few Toshibas over the years, and never had a significant or serious problem. I would assume that any problems with defective parts would have impacted only certain models within certain manufacturing periods – so whatever you experienced just isn’t something that impacted me. </p>
<p>Whatever people need to do to preserve battery life, I probably don’t do properly, anyway. I think you are supposed to let the battery run down almost all the way and then recharge? </p>
<p>That advice applied to older nickel-metal hydride batteries which haven’t been used in laptops for around 20 years. </p>
<p>With current lithium-ion batteries, running them to absolute zero regularly will actually shorten their lives. With them, it’s actually better to top off the battery before it goes to absolute zero. </p>
<p>It also isn’t good to store batteries at 100% or 0% charge if one’s not going to be using it right away/regularly. </p>
<p>If one’s not going to be using a battery for a while, best to do it with charge around 40-60% and in a cool dark place. </p>
<p>My macbook pro is 7 years old, admittedly I dont carry it around much and I certainly don’t work on 600page documents.
Re batteries, I wont speak to the laptops, but my ipad3 seemed to be losing a charge instead of taking it, so I let it run down enough so that it shut off by itself, then recharged it, which seems to be helping.
A little.</p>
<p>Are you using the original Apple adapter which came with the Ipad or using a third-party adapter/charging through USB?</p>
<p>Just wondering as some third party adapters or USB ports do not necessarily provide enough power to enable charging while simultaneously keeping it on/using it. </p>
<p>The Dell is a Vostro and the Toshibas both Satellites. The Dell was around $300 bought from the Dell outlet, refurb. The Toshibas just from Best Buy or similar. If I get 5 years out of a $300 laptop I think I’m doing pretty well :)</p>
<p>Thanks for the battery info, Cobrat – unfortunately you’ve kind of proved my point (i.e., whatever is the right thing to do to preserve battery life, I’m probably not doing it.). With the Toshibas it wasn’t really a concern to me – I was pretty much in the habit of running them plugged into the charger 90% of the time, except for the netbook that I used for travel. (And which is still running great by the way, at least the last time I booted i up, except that I don’t use it at all because I replaced it with a newer model – the netbook was a great machine, but the screen size was too small for me to work comfortably.)</p>
<p>Anyway, I didn’t care about having to replace a battery every once in a while, because I’ve always assumed that batteries in things need to be replaced. I generally ordered discount batteries online – which could also have been a factor for battery life – but again, it didn’t occur to me that a battery wouldn’t need periodic replacement.</p>
<p>But now that I’ve got a machine with sealed battery, doing things right is a little more important to me. Somewhere I read that I should not work with it plugged in all the time, but that I should let it run down to about 10-20% and then recharge. But I can’t remember where I read that…it seems that in this case, Google is not my friend. Every web site I find seems to advocate something different. </p>
<p>It does seem to recharge really fast, so at least right now I’ve got a battery that’s in good enough shape. </p>
I remember reading the same but it was quite some time ago.</p>
<p>I think another battery-related issue is how long the battery inside a smartphone like iPhone would last. A recall for a battery defect is not unheard of. Is it safe to assume that if we replace a smartphone, say, every 4 years, its battery is still in a usable state at the end of 4 years? I really hate to replace the phone as frequently as every 2 years. BTW, somebody told me that iPhone 5S could last more hours without recharging than iPhone 5 due to the design of iPhone 5S (not so much because of the battery itself.) Not sure whether this is true.</p>
<p>And the battery in a car is yet another issue. I think we likely replace it every 3 or 4 years.</p>
<p>OK, this is getting really confusing. Some web sites say that I should attempt to keep my computer running as much as possible on a 60-80% charge – so I should charge it up to 80% and then unplug it and let the battery run down, ten start charging again. Apparently that 60-80% is the sweet spot where the electrons in the battery just keep dancing and are the happiest. But every once in a while I should let it run down a lot more, just to keep the meter that tells how much time is left happy. </p>
<p>Still other sites say that is a bunch of bunk and it is fine to always run the computer plugged in, just so long as I unplug it and let he battery drain almost all the way about once a month- and also I should leave the computer unplugged when it is turned off.</p>
<p>And of course other sites say that the worst thing I can do, ever, is to always run my laptop with the AC cord plugged in…</p>
<p>On another note, every once in a while the battery meter on my smart phone breaks, so it shows the battery almost fully discharged and it doesn’t show the battery taking any sort of charge at all, no matter how long it is plugged in. The cure for this is to power down the phone, open it up, take the battery out, wave it around, then put it back into the phone and power everything back up. This is not the first or only cell phone ailment that can be cured by taking the battery out and putting it back in. I remember that being the general cure-all way back in prehistoric times when our phones were dumb and we used them mainly to make and receive phone calls.</p>
<p>Come to think of it, when I was a little kid, we sometimes could revive a dead flash light by taking out the batteries and putting them back in. </p>