Page 1 of 1

Zero Point on a battery?

Posted: 2004-04-05 02:25pm
by General Zod
the other day i heard something about how batteries have a zero point that determines the amount of power they store up when charging.

lately, my laptop's battery (it's rather old and buggy, but i don't want to go out and buy a new battery) has been having issues with not knowing when it's completely charged or not. sometimes it'll read at 100% when it's only, say, 20% full. Is there a way to reset the supposed zero point of a battery if it's actually real, and does anyone know how to do it? more importantly is anyone familiar with it that can give me a good summary of how it works? any help would be appreciated.

Posted: 2004-04-07 08:21pm
by Shadowhawk
http://www.mytechsupport.ca/support/top ... IC_ID=1221
http://hardwarehell.com/battery.htm

Some types of batteries (and battery controllers) do have a problem regarding memory. Newer batteries and battery controllers don't have as big a problem with this--they can drain and recharge at any point in the cycle without conditioning the battery for shorter life.

Of course, old batteries simply don't hold a charge as well, so if your battery is several years old, you probably won't change much by doing what the above URLs recommend. I just finally had to replace 3 digital camera batteries and one digitial video camera battery at work because the things were discharging after just 15 or 20 minutes. They were all something like 4 years old and had poor oversight on battery usage (sitting in the charger for days at a time, being charged when only fractionally drained, sitting in the camera for days without use...).