How to maximize Dell vostro 1720 battery life when use laptop both on power adapter and battery

However there’s a disadvantage in keeping the battery in its socket when the laptop is plugged in, but only if it’s currently suffering from excessive heating caused by the laptop hardware.

So:

– In a normal laptop battery usage, if the laptop doesn’t get too hot (CPU and Hard Disk around 40ºC to 50ºC) the battery should remain in the laptop socket;

– In an intensive usage which leads to a large amount of heat produced (i.e. Games, temperatures above 60ºC) the battery should be removed from the socket in order to prevent unwanted heating.

The heat, among the fact that it has 100% of charge, is the great enemy of the lithium battery and not the plug, as many might think so.

Dell Vostro 1720 Battery discharges

Full battery discharges (until laptop power shutdown, 0%) should be avoided, because this stresses the battery a lot and can even damage it. It’s recommended to perform partial discharges to capacity levels of 20~30% and frequent charges, instead of performing a full discharging followed by a full charging.

Laptop batteries contain a capacity gauge that allows us to know the exact amount of energy stored. However, due to the charging/discharging cycles, this sensor tends to be inaccurate overtime.t

Some laptops include in their BIOS, tools to recalibrate this battery gauge, which is nothing more than a full discharge followed by a full charge.
So to calibrate the gauge, it should be performed, in every 30 discharge cycles, a full discharge non-stop , followed by a also, non-stop, full charge.

An inaccurate gauge can lead to the fact that the the battery capacity values are are wrong. The Dell Vostro 1320 Laptop Battery may report that it still has 10% of capacity when in fact it has a much lower value, and this causes the computer to shutdown unexpectedly.
 

Discharge (or charge) cycles consist of using all that battery charge (100%) but not necessarily all at once.
For example, you can use the laptop for some minutes in a day, using half its battery capacity e then fully charge it. If you did the same thing in the next day, it would be counted a discharge cycle and not two, so it may take several days until a full discharge cycle is completed.