help with lithium-ion batteries

[Guest joelb69]

Just managed to get the missus a c550 and was wondering about what to do when the green light comes on at the initial charging period?

as far as im aware lithium-ion dont need specific charging times as they have no "memory effect" also no where in both manuals does it say to charge it for 16 hrs. further more the manual also suggests that over charging can actually reduce its battery life. and after reading a few threads on the subject it seems people that do give it a 16 hour charge get strange results. can anyone assure me that this is the case and that she can start playing with it after just a 2 hr charge?

[Guest w411y]

i only charged mine for about 4 hrs b4 i started using it and everythings fine. but to make sure the battery lasts its longest go to .. start-> settings-> power management and then change Display Time Out to anything other than never. ive got mine set to 1 minute and my battery easily goes 3 days without charging :)

[Guest joelb69]

thank you w411y, thats all i needed to hear, thank you also for the quick response.

[Guest w411y]

your welcome :)

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

It's best to keep li-ion batteries topped up rather than letting them discharge.

Discharging them can damage the capacitance and shorten their life.

[Guest joelb69]

Some sound advice from the moderator aswel thank you

[Guest Geeklord]

May I add that when your LED turns green, your battery is not 100% full. it wouldn't help to wait a couple more minutes before you unplug.

As for the memory thing, the only factor that may cause your battery to behave like a NiMH is when you hard reset with less than a full batt.

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

The Hard Reset without a fully charged battery would only reduce the ammount of hours usable on the battery, not really a gradual reduction over time as the memory effect of Ni-mh batteries have. Fully charging the battery and then redoing a Hard Reset would correct this.

On the memory side of things Li-ion batteries still have the memory effect but it is much less pronounced than other battery types. Manufacturers generally make their batteries to last a year at optimum performance, any more than that then it's a bonus.