jg49
16 December 2009
Well I've finally joined the 21st century. I purchased my first laptop computer. This is really not a music computer but an all around everyday unit which will have speakers, my present internet computer does not, and while it will travel occasionally will primarily be plugged in and on most of the time in one location. My question has to do with battery longetivity. Should I remove the battery when set up in a fixed location plugged into AC power for extended periods of time (weeks often)? Or is it ok to charge the battery for extended periods?
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Leave the battery in the laptop all the time. It won't hurt it.
Leave the battery in the laptop all the time. It won't hurt it. My laptops are plugged in to the wall 90% of the time. In fact, I have two extra power cords-one for my SKB Studio Flyer (w/FF800 & True 8 & one of my Onyx 800R's) and one that is permanently plugged in at my office desk. IMO it is good practice to periodically unplug the laptop and let it use the battery down to 10-20%.
If you have a spare battery swap it out once a month or so. Store any extra batteries in electrostatic bags. The reason for this is most modern laptop batteries are "smart" batteries and have flash chips inside them. If the chip gets fried for any reason the battery won't work even if the cells are good. Ask me how I know. :-( I'm too cheap to replace the spare.
The best scheme for spare batteries is on the Dell Latitude series. The optical drive is actually a replaceable media bay. I have spare units that are batteries, hard drives, even a floppy. Great general business computer. It's just not my favorite for what's under the hood recording wise.
If this were a computer you were going to record with I would tell you to tweak your power scheme and then go into the Device Manager and disable ACPI. This gets rid of some background stuff that potentially cause artifacts.