Now that I’m not a student, my laptop stays tethered to its power adapter on my desk; usually hibernating although it is sometimes awake when I need a second browser/monitor.

I took it out for a spin a couple of weeks back, as part of my knocking things off week for wedding planning. I brought it down to the Toronto Reference Library to do some work, because borrowing one of their existing terminals is just so homeless. Anyways, I was working on it for a good hour and a bit when it suddenly jumped from some high percentage (70% or something) to 1% instantly and gave me a warning message saying I NEED TO SLEEP NOW. So I let it sleep and recharge on the ground at a nearby outlet.

When I got home and charged it “fully”, I found the real cause of the problem. Apparently my battery can only charge up to some 26% now — good for an hour and bit of low-intensity surfing. I read up on the web on how to reset the PMU, PRAM, and other alphabetagoop but that didn’t solve my problem. So I’ve resorted to conditioning my battery by discharging it fully.

My first go at it, I went up to a 43% charge, which sounds like progress; but when I tried reconditioning it a second time, I only achieved a 39% charge. It’s now an ongoing side project of mine to charge and discharge this battery, in the hopes that it can charge to its full capacity. Right now, it’s exhibiting some quirky behaviour by only charging a trickle charge every couple of seconds (it’s up from 39.5% to 40.6% as I write this post).

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: batteries, geeky