Powerbook: Leave it plugged in...or not?

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Powerbook: Leave it plugged in...or not?

I recently got an old Wallstreet off Ebay, and it had a dud battery, so I've ordered a new one. But I probably won't be running it off the battery much till summer, when my dog will want to go outside while I need to work on my writing. Meanwhile, I have the thing hooked up to an old monitor so I can play TIE Fighter with an ADB joystick again (thank heavens.)

My question is: is it better to leave the battery out of the computer if it's going to be sitting plugged in? Will being on the charger continually wear out the battery? Or will it go bad sitting on the shelf as well, the way non-rechargeable batteries can? Is it better for the battery to leave it sit and go dead, or have it constantly charged? (Lithium Ion)

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as a fellow wallstreet-gotten

as a fellow wallstreet-gotten-off-ebay-but-battery-was-bad owner, I say, it is ok to leave it plugged in with the good battery in it. wallstreets use an intellegent battery, ie, they dont go shot if they are plugged in all the time. and: are you sure the dud is bad? try sticking it in the freezer for 24 hours. then, if that doesnt work, try battery reset 2.0 (google for it). I did that, and now the battery that came with my machine can hold a nice 2.5 hour charge!!

also, if you dont plan on using the battery(ies) for a while, at least, at a minnimum, cycle (fully discharge then fully recharge) them at least once a month.

oh, and FYI, im typing this on my wallstreet running on it's battery (good 1:50 left on the clock), and a WIFi card under OS 8.1.

best. keyboard. on. a. laptop. EVER.

oh, and for some reason, my battery refuses to charge unless the computer is asleep or off. it wont charge if the damn ting is on. must be a bad PMU or Dc in board. oh well, it works.

lastly, in case you didnt know, press that button on the battery (even if it's not in the wallstreet). those 4 LEDs will light up to however high a charge you have. 4=full, 3=3/4, 2=1/2, 1=1/4, 1 FLASHING=CHARGE YOUR DAMN BATTERY!!

-digital Wink

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Leave It Plugged In, Mostly

With NiCads and the like, constantly charging them and not excercising them would kill them. The death knell for a lithium ion battery though is it becoming completely discharged.

I'd vote for leaving it plugged in and the battery in... once a month or so, run it down to like 10% remaining and charge it up again for good measure. Waiting until you actually want to use it though may render it forever dead.

-- Macinjosh

EDIT: Case in point, the Lion for my new-to-me Omnibook 6000... sat at a shop for a year, waiting to be disposed of... the shop sold it to me for $10 with a dead motherboard. Replaced that and have a new laptop for under $100, but the battery flat-out (pun intended) refuses to charge. Anyone have any Weird Science ideas to try and get it going again before I eBay myself a replacement? (which I worry about doing, buying a new battery and having it be DOA because it's never been used...)

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its dangerous as Heck but you

its dangerous as Heck but you could bypass the charger circuits to manually charge the battery a little bit to see if the cells the selves are still ok. but more then likely they arent ok. the other thing you could check is to see if they have a charge in them at all, and if they have alot then the circuit probly got confused and needs to be discharged a little then try to charge it. i did the latter with my lombard and its perfect again. this also means splitting the pack open which may provide to be difficult on some batteries. i got lucky with mine.

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Thanks, guys! That answers m

Thanks, guys! That answers my question.

Hey, iamdigitalman, I'll have to try those weird fixes! Biggrin After all I have nothing to lose--a good one's on its way, may as well experiment with the dud. Batterycicle...being...frozen.

(Oh, and my bad battery only shows one light--sometimes flashing--but one time only, it actually showed four lights while the computer was booting off AC. I really don't know what was going on with it at that point...

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Hi all - another WallStreet u

Hi all - another WallStreet user joins your ranks. Just stuck the battery in the freezer, let's see where that gets us. Actually, I shall post a long and woeful tale about the parts missing from my WallStreet (G3 300/192/ 8 gig HDD broken hinges & spacebar/no cdrom) - that was a brief synopsis.

I was however wondering about the battery. Whenever I insert it into the left expansion bay, it clicks but still feels somewhat loose; any ideas whether this could be remedied in any way? Right EB works alright, but I sure hope I put it to better use before too long Smile

Over/out

Mickey

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Battery life

I'm going to aks just a quick question. How long is the shelf life on a Lithium Battery??. I bought a lot of used computers and componets early this year and in with them were 6 boxs of M4399 Lithium batterys for the G3 powerbook (Kanga and fits the 3400c) as they were new I posted them on e-bay for $20.00 each plus shipping. No takers.

So after about 4 months of having them sit around in my way off they went to the recycler. I did keep 4 of the batterys and had a use for them later on. These batterys I know sat for over 3 years NIB unopened and each and every one I kept has charged up and will run a 3400c for 3 Hrs according to the battery indecator acually less under hard use. 2 and 1/2 to 3 hrs average. I have one I charged up 3 weeks ago and it still shows a full charge.

So the question is how long is the shelf life of this type battery uncharged??

Jon
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Generally the life of a Lithi

Generally the life of a Lithium cell is about 3 years from manufature. That's 3 years from when the cell left the people who rolled it up, not from the people who packaged it into the laptop battery pack. If they are stored cool they stand a good chance of lasting longer. By the fact that you got some that hold a decent charge, I'd be happy if I was you.

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My Wallstreet battery is also

My Wallstreet battery is also slightly loose in the left bay. It seems that if the computer is running on battery on that side and the battery gets touched, power is lost and the computer crashes so hard that I get a blinking question mark disk and end up having to reinstall...

The bay works okay for charging the battery, but I will no longer trust it to power the computer.

It's just a mechanical issue, fix being bend a clip or something. But I'm tired of installing, so I'll just run a 1 bay computer.

In other news, I just today found that the fix for a broken backlight in os X is to boot once into os 9. It works even if you just boot from the install cd. (I don't have a hard disk instalation.)

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