sills18 said:
So thanks for your help guys, I'm getting a new battery with-in a few days. Thanks
Well Hooray for Dell, that must be the first time i have heard of Dell actually being helpful.
Nice to see that you are now sorted, Here's some advice I found regards Laptop batteries.
If you are going to actually run on battery often, then just use it
however you wish. Note that extreme discharges (below 15% or 20%) will
shorten the life, and that Lithium batteries have a finite life (number
of charge-discharge cycles), after which they become pretty much useless
(the number varies, but it's in the mid-hundreds). It's not clear to me
how "partial" charges and discharges figure into this.
If you are operating on AC power most of the time, I'd charge the
battery fully, use the computer on battery down to perhaps 25%, charge
it back up to about 60%-70% and then TAKE IT OUT OF THE LAPTOP and store
it at a nice comfortable temperature (climate controlled room temp).
Some people will recommend refrigeration, which is ok as long as you
don't freeze it, but I think that the difference between room temp. and
refrigeration (which is theoretically better) is not significant as a
practical matter (I have decade old batteries stored at normal room temp
that are nearly as good as new).
I buy, sell, repair and refurbish laptops and see hundreds of batteries
per year. My one comment to you is that the very worst thing that you
can do is to leave the battery in the laptop when the laptop is running
on AC power (plugged into the wall) for long periods of time. We are
not sure whether it's overcharging or heat (and it's probably both to
varying degrees on a model-by-model basis), but this will very often
destroy a perfectly good $200 battery in 9 to 24 months. Otherwise,
these batteries can last from 5 years to more than a decade.
[If you do store it, some use every 3 to 6 months is highly desireable,
but 1 or 2 charge - discharge cycles is all that you need.]
Regards