Consensus? Laptop shutdown or sleep?

[97tbird]

I am sure this has been discussed before, but IDK if there's any agreement on this...

when I go to sleep or to work, what's safest (i mean longevity wise) for a laptop? shut down or put in 'sleep' mode?
( i am talking about periods of 7-8 hrs)

My wife (ThinkPad Edge) tends to shut down more, and I think i (thinpad T520) choose sleep mode more...

is one better than the other?
Discuss and/or suggest.


Also: is it still agreed upon that if laptops are used only/mostly on AC power, it's better to take the battery off?

 

[tommygunn]

Yep, take the battery off if its mostly on AC. Fully charged, remove it, and keep it stored. The battery will survive alot longer with less wear that way.

As for sleep or shutdown, I only ever put it to sleep as a temporary thing if I'm moving between rooms or classes or something. Its faster to resume from, but sleep mode does still consume power, and if the battery eventually goes dead on sleep mode you risk losing programs/data.

Shutdown takes longer to start from but its %100 shut down. I always shutdown personally because the extra 30 seconds for a full reboot are nothing.

 

[Quest]

For desktop with Win7: I typically put it in sleep mode; for laptop, depends.

Q.

 

[Colt45ws]

Should be roughly the same as far as life. Just that sleep is faster starting up though it adds a bit of a draw to the battery. I guess it could be slightly harder on the battery if unplugged.
I leave my T500 on sleep pretty much all the time.
I leave my battery in, though I have it setup to only charge to 90% to reduce wear.

 

[rationull]

The battery will go bad eventually even if it's never used, and some laptops actually use the battery as part of their cooling system (IIRC anyway, this info could be outdated and may not apply to Thinkpads) so it's not necessarily the best thing to take it out. If you must, I think something like 40% is the best "storage charge" for a Li ion battery.

Personally, I sleep my personal machine (macbook) all the time and only shut it down if I have to reboot for updates or if I'm going away for the weekend and taking it with me, and it'll be unplugged for a few days. For years I was taking it with my to work every day and it would be asleep most of the day and then charge back up at night. Nearly 5 years old and 317 charge cycles on the battery and it's still doing fine.

My work laptop (Dell Latitude), though, I only sleep if I'm going to bring it home and keep working that night, and otherwise I hibernate it (save RAM to disk and turn power off). If it didn't drain so much power while it was asleep (2% per hour or so IIRC) then I would probably just sleep it instead.

Longevity wise I don't think it matters for the laptop itself. For the battery, maybe, but the BEST way you can treat a Li Ion battery IMO is to use it such that it at least gets a full charge cycle every few weeks to a month. I've had the worst lifetimes from batteries that I babied and my outlook now is you might as well USE the battery for its intended purpose.

I got this info mostly from Apple's guidelines on battery care over the years.

 

[rationull]

Originally Posted By: Colt45ws

I leave my battery in, though I have it setup to only charge to 90% to reduce wear.


This is a feature I wish more machines came with. A big battery along with programming that only lets it cycle from 15% to 90% or so would be a good thing for battery life.

 

[Volvohead]

Originally Posted By: 97tbird
I am sure this has been discussed before, but IDK if there's any agreement on this...

when I go to sleep or to work, what's safest (i mean longevity wise) for a laptop? shut down or put in 'sleep' mode?
( i am talking about periods of 7-8 hrs)

My wife (ThinkPad Edge) tends to shut down more, and I think i (thinpad T520) choose sleep mode more...

is one better than the other?
Discuss and/or suggest.


Also: is it still agreed upon that if laptops are used only/mostly on AC power, it's better to take the battery off?


I prefer a lappy that comes up in under 5 seconds.

Put it to sleep, leave it plugged into AC, and LEAVE THE BATTERY IN. The power draw is negligible, and none of it is coming from the battery as regards current. Only caveat is an extended AC power outage, which might drain down the battery.

If you want to extend battery and charger/PSU life, don't charge the battery when running the device.

About the battery puller crowd:

We get 3-5 years (often longer) out of a battery assembly. It's the internal heat from charge cycling them that kills the lithium cells, less so from the other components (and certainly not while asleep). Pulling the battery when on AC isn't going to change that. And you'll want a battery in whenever you're running any meaningful updates (including BIOS flashes).

Pulling the battery assembly in and out all the time is just asking for other problems. It's very hard on the charger/power circuit, which is a lot more expensive/inconvenient to replace than a battery. Years back, we had several Compaqs blow through charger boards from "smart" folks pulling the batteries in and out all the time. Now a lot of them are integrated into the MB, which is an even bigger repair.

The only time you want the battery out is when it truly goes south, as it is then overworking the charger circuit.

That, or install a dummy battery (yes, IBM & later Lenovo made them) and permanently run AC only . . . although that certainly defeats the purpose of a portable.

Of course, all of this presumes you're not leaving the thing in a 140F car interior all afternoon (yeah, people do that too). Then all bets are off.

 

[Rand]

I use sleepmode if I'm plugged in or coming back within an hour or 2.

Also if you want the battery to have a longer lifetime you can set it to charge to 85 or 90% max.. this will prolong its life(ie in years)

 

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: Rand
I use sleepmode if I'm plugged in or coming back within an hour or 2.

Also if you want the battery to have a longer lifetime you can set it to charge to 85 or 90% max.. this will prolong its life(ie in years)


Is there any free software for setting a battery to charge to 85% or 90%?

 

[RTexasF]

I use sleep if I'll be using it again soon and hibernate for non usage for 6 hours or more. Turn it off overnight about once a month. Battery is not in unless I'm going to charge it or use it. I've yet to see any two articles written by professionals that agree what to do with the battery....in or out. The only agreement I have seen is to run it down completely about once a month to reset the "gas gauge", so to speak, so it maintains accuracy.

 

[97tbird]

Thanks for the great info.
on my windows 7 pro i can set the battery to max charge to any % i like... I set it to 90%

 

[rjundi]

You really going to bring this conversation up with your wife? I would let her do as she pleases.

After suffering with a junky battery for two years (<45 mins on charge). For $25 for T500 battery from Amazon I get 3.5 - 4hrs. Batteries are relatively cheap aftermarket.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: tommygunn
Fully charged, remove it, and keep it stored. The battery will survive alot longer with less wear that way.




Electrolyte oxidation, which contributes to a more substantial SEI layer and thus increased impedance occurs themost at elevated voltages.

Optimal storage would be more like 30% SOC.

Thing is, the side reactions still occur. So, unless you can keep it substantially cooler than it would be if it was kept on the computer, the Ahhrenius behavior will still occur.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: 97tbird
I am sure this has been discussed before, but IDK if there's any agreement on this...

when I go to sleep or to work, what's safest (i mean longevity wise) for a laptop? shut down or put in 'sleep' mode?
( i am talking about periods of 7-8 hrs)

My wife (ThinkPad Edge) tends to shut down more, and I think i (thinpad T520) choose sleep mode more...

is one better than the other?
Discuss and/or suggest.


Also: is it still agreed upon that if laptops are used only/mostly on AC power, it's better to take the battery off?


Is it sleep or hibernate? Can it hibernate? Is it kept plugged in when asleep/off?

Sleeping still pulls energy from the battery. Sleep can still cause small discharges. The more cycles it goes, the worse it is for the battery. Granted a battery can do orders of magnitude more very shallow cycles than deep ones...

Hibernate uses next to no energy, maybe none at all.

Shutting down is the same.

The later two are more energy efficient, and if the computers are like my mac, it boots from dead off in less than 20 seconds.

if startup time is very slow, then sleep/hibernate may be better, with sleep likely faster to recover.

The main issue with any of the modes versus keeping it on was thermal cycles on the equipment. Sleep vs hibernate vs off will not change the thermal characteristics, so things like HDDs will thermally cycle all the same. Maybe some capacitors will last longer being unpowered though...

Id do what wastes the least amount of energy. If the HDD goes bad, which is the only real sensitive part IME, then use it as an excuse to buy an SSD.

If this thinkpad is like mine, I'd change the max battery SOC to somewhere between 30-50%, and leave it at that. The issues associated with a minor power blip harming components is more $ and inconveniencing than the loss of a small amount of battery life. Keeping it at low SOC and not cycling it will do 90% of what you can. The only thing better is to keep it cold, but Id rather take that risk.

 

[Volvohead]

Electrically, the laptop (including sleep mode) pulls no current from the battery when it is plugged into the AC power supply.

Not that it's been mentioned, but hibernation should be completely disabled whenever an SSD is present.

The latest versions of Thinkvantage Power Manager allow for automatic trimming of battery charge level for optimal battery life. It's a click and go setting. As for everyone else, I imagine that charge levels need to be manually set below 100%.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: Volvohead
Electrically, the laptop (including sleep mode) pulls no current from the battery when it is plugged into the AC power supply.

.


What I was getting at is that when the system is unplugged it will still pull power if it is in sleep mode. So, if you unplug your computer when you're not using it in order to prevent phantom loads (though the power factor is poor, the adapter will still pull a few hundredths of an amp, unloaded and disconnected), then when it is in sleep mode the battery will gradually discharge very slowly.

So to be the most efficient you need to have no current draw on the battery or the AC adapter which means hibernate or shut down with the adapter unplugged from the wall.