Tips on how to prolong laptop's life

dreamlogic

Just looking for some general advice about prolonging the life of my 2 yr old laptop, the battery etc.
It's a Dell Inspiron 6400, almost 2 years old now. It has been okay sofar, really can't complain.. One thing is the 1GB of RAM which I might upgrade to 2GB when I have money to spare.. But hopefully the harddrive or something won't have died by then. I don't know what the lifespan of the average Dell laptop harddrive is but from what I've heard it's around 2 years??
Anyway my main concern for now is the battery and recharger as I know they are fairly expensive to replace if they die..
I never take the laptop out anywhere, it's at home all the time and plugged in. But recently I noticed(when there was a powercut) that the battery life was very short, 1.75 hrs(on high performance). Is this normal, I just had presumed it should be more than this..?
Is it wrong to leave it plugged in all day, or better to leave it unplugged sometimes?
I do turn the power off at the mains at night, and shut the lid on laptop. I presume it goes into hibernate or something - the next morning it just asks me to log in. Is this wasting its life? Is it better to shut windows down every night?
Thanks so much for any replies.

AlmightyCushion

If you are going to leave it plugged in for more than an hour or so remove the battery and keep it in a cool dry place preferably charged to around 70%. This will help prolong the battery as long as possible.

A hard drive will go when it goes you can't really predict that. Laptop hard drives would probably not last as long as a desktop given that laptops get moved a lot and get a lot of bumps. Even still your average laptop hard drive would probably last 4 years maybe more.

I never leave my laptop in hibernate mode, I've noticed it sometimes messes things up (doesn't start up right and I have to restart it anyways) also this needs power so it will use the battery while in hibernation. I would recommend shutting it down at night. It doesn't take much longer than putting it in hibernation.

Tristram

I'm amazed that my Inspiron is still on the go given the number of hours of use it's seen. Had it almost five years now.

Voodu Child

Just looking for some general advice about prolonging the life of my 2 yr old laptop, the battery etc.

Battery life is basically a function of cycles (number of complete charge/discharge cycles), so to prolong it, don't use it :pac: Which kind of negates the whole point of a laptop, but anyway... Typically a modern battery will 'last' 300-500 cycles, but it's a fuzzy definition, as it won't just suddenly die but you'll gradually see (as you have) reduced lifespan.

Temperatures are very important in terms of prologing the life of the machine. The simple thing anyone can do is to keep the vents clear of dust/debris. To do the job fully, you'd need to open it up and physically clean the fan (ie clean the dust build up from the fan blades etc). Its something i do every few months, but whether you do it yourself will depend on how comfortable you are opening it up. Ive seen load temps drop 10C just by doing this on machines that hadn't been cleaned in a while. This is why you shouldn't use a laptop on a bed etc, as the intake fans will just suck tonnes of dust into the vents.

You can go further in the pursuit of a cooler machine, and undervolt the processor - this will safely lower temperatures without affecting performance. I do it on all my laptops as a matter of course. Again, I believe a processor running at x degrees will last longer than one running at x+10, and literally those kinds of results (10-15C cooler) are sometimes possible. Its slightly technical, so post back if you actually want to do it.

In the same vein, the factory thermal paste (between the key components like the CPU and the heat sink) is probably cruddy and dried up. You could remove it and re-apply a high performance paste, which in theory could lower temps a few degrees. That's slightly advanced again, but something to consider if you have a techy friend or family member.

To prolong the charger, just be careful how you store it and wrap it up. The amount of times ive seen people tightly wrap the cable around the charger! Just use a bit of common sense and try not to put any stress anywhere on the cable, especially near the ends.

As AC said, a hard-drive can die at any time, you'd hope it lasts a few years but sh1t happens, so make sure you've got all your stuff backed up. Once you've got your stuff backed up, a HDD failure isn't a major problem, they're cheap as chips these days, and a new one would perform much better than what you have anyway.

Alanstrainor

I've have had my inspiron 6400 for over two and a half years now and it's still going strong. I've upgraded the RAM to 2Gb and that's it really. As for the HD if it's not being moved around i'd say (fingers crossed) it should be fine, i wouldn't be expecting mine to die any time soon. As for your battery, that's a very good life to have out of it after 2 years. My battery lasts a total of 30 seconds on a full charge, basically it's borked. But as said, if you want to prolong the already impressive battery life given it's age, take out the battery while it's plugged in and not charging. (if ony i knew that a year ago:o)
There's no hard and fast rule for hard drive failure, people, myself included have had drives for 5+ years that still work. Even if it were tofail buying a new one is very cheap these days, about 60 quid for 120Gbish.

Run_to_da_hills

Tristram wrote: »

I'm amazed that my Inspiron is still on the go given the number of hours of use it's seen. Had it almost five years now.

I had a S.H P3 Dell PPX 650 since 2002 and never missed a beat, origional battery, replaced hdd drive. Left it opened overnight in the rain last summer and that was the end of it. Still looking for a replacement board.:mad:

Overheal

Just last night had my hands on a 4 year old inspiron. Disassembled it, cleaned out the dust, tried to fix the power connector which was loose (failed to) but other than that the laptop was still hanging in there. Good kitty.

Battery wise, Pays to have a spare I guess. Either get into the habit of rarely connecting it or have a fresh spare which is only going to be used when you intend to be away from a ower source for a couple hours. When your old battery completely dies youll be glad of the replacement.

You can also speed it back up by (yes upgrading ram) but also reformatting and reinstalling windows, defragging the hard drive, etc etc.

Run_to_da_hills

Overheal wrote: »

Just last night had my hands on a 4 year old inspiron. Disassembled it, cleaned out the dust, tried to fix the power connector which was loose (failed to) but other than that the laptop was still hanging in there. Good kitty.

Battery wise, Pays to have a spare I guess. Either get into the habit of rarely connecting it or have a fresh spare which is only going to be used when you intend to be away from a ower source for a couple hours. When your old battery completely dies youll be glad of the replacement.

You can also speed it back up by (yes upgrading ram) but also reformatting and reinstalling windows, defragging the hard drive, etc etc.

I used to use only the Dell /PPXCPX/CPJ/Models from the 400 MHz Pentium 2 to P4 2GHZ and nothing else for about 10 years. All batteries, HDD Caddies and bays were interchangeable with all models. Had 4 batteries and 3 power supplies at one time. Parts are still dirt cheap and plentiful for them on Ebay and they still make a good browsing hack