[H-GEN] Dell notebooks, a lap warming experience.

[Russell Stuart]

On Tue, 2006-07-25 at 10:07 +1000, Ronald Bradford wrote:
> I recently purchased a fan stand while in Singapore for my Dell laptop 
> for around $15. It runs off USB and has 3 fans which makes the entire 
> laptop quite cool.
> Still these pictures are disturbing, my laptop is on 24x7.

A recommendation: if your laptop is plugged into mains,
remove the batteries after they have finished charging.  
Not only will it protect you from fires, it will prolong 
the life of the batteries.

For some reason I can't fathom, leaving batteries in
a laptop when it is connected to the mains reduces
their life to approx 1 year - even if they are not 
used in that time.  I recently retired a laptop which 
spent most of its time connected to the mains, with the
batteries in its bag.  It was 3.5 years old, and as far 
as I could tell the  batteries still lasted as long as 
the day I bought them.

My best guess is the batteries are continually going 
through very shallow discharge / top up cycles when
the laptop is connected to the mains.  Whatever the
cause, there is huge room for improvement when it
comes to laptop battery management.  You would think
the laptop manufacturers designed the circuits with 
the goal of selling more batteries.