Ask HN: Best laptop by battery (after long usage)?

1 pointstxutxu2y ago2 comments

I've had few 100% new laptops in my life. But with all of them I've the same issue... after 2 or 3 years of usage, the battery losses it's functionality.

I've had Toshiba, Macbooks (Air 2012), HP, Lenovo, MSI...

My usage is a lot of hours every single day, I think that is the root cause.

I use Linux+fluxbox, terminals and the browser, with powertop or TLP tuned. During first year, I even exceed the advertised battery performance, and multiply that of colleagues with the same laptop but heavier systems (gnome...)

But I'm worried I'm missing something, doing something wrong, it's at 2 or 3 years, that the battery reduces drastically the performance, and at 3 or 4 years it starts to shutdown unexpectedly (for example when it says there is a 45% still available, plop!).

One thing that I'm not sure if I do OK, is to try charge once I'm at 10% level... and when I'm on the desk, I always have the charger in.

I try to make full cycle of charge/discharge, full discharge from the BIOS (to avoid the operative system power savings), and different tips from internet... nothing helps, when I reach this state, there is no back. Any magic solution here is welcome.

20 Years back, I remember getting out the battery while working at the desk. But today laptops cannot do that. Also I see laptops announcing 20 hours of duration, battery upgrades, etc, but I suspect, that with same usage I will get the same issue.

Do you know any laptop model, or model+OS combination, that after 3 or 4 years of +12 hours of daily usage, still can be considered a portable computer and doesn't need the charger to work at least 4 hours? What is the best one after such a intense life?

2 comments

stephenr2y ago

> when I'm on the desk, I always have the charger in.

Unless the machine specifically handles this scenario, this can artificially wear the battery. Newer MacBooks handle this better with "intelligent" charging (I couldn't say for sure whether a 2012 MBA would have had this feature), but I don't know about other brands.

But the real answer here is that batteries are essentially consumable parts. They won't last forever, and once it drops below holding ~80% of the original charge, it's worthwhile replacing it.

txutxuOP2y ago

> Unless the machine specifically handles this scenario, this can artificially wear the battery. Newer MacBooks handle this better with "intelligent" charging (I couldn't say for sure whether a 2012 MBA would have had this feature), but I don't know about other brands.

Yes... this is why I did use to take it out in old laptops while not moving from the desk.

With my thinkpad, I used to do:

    sudo tlp setcharge 60 95 BAT0

This means: "start charging when level is 60% and stop charging when it reaches 90%"

> But the real answer here is that batteries are essentially consumable parts. They won't last forever, and once it drops below holding ~80% of the original charge, it's worthwhile replacing it.

Indeed, probably for the extensive use I do, it's normal to do not pass the 3 or 4 years of good conditions.

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