This is really a poor software solution to an old hardware solution that disappeared for the sake of thinness: removable batteries. In the past with easily removable battery packs you could simply pop them out once they're fully charged and pop them in when you wanted to make sure they were charged up. When manufacturers started touting long life cycle batteries to justify internalizing them and making them difficult to replace and impossible to quickly pop out, software manufacturers added this in to attempt or extend battery life.

Before, I simply removed my battery when plugged in all day and significantly extended my battery life. If I needed it, it was mostly charged. It would of course dissipate over time so if I had any plans of using my laptop in an actual mobile fashion or wanted to move my laptop from one long term power source to the next, I'd pop it in, make the move and pop it back out. I of course lost the UPS feature having a laptop with a battery pack also served but I could assess when I thought my power source was/wasn't stable and pop the battery in under those conditions (not very often).

Most people I know use laptops as portable workstations. If you frequently operate in situations where you desire battery alone then the OS charge management works quite well. I don't and most people I know don't. In today's world, mos the use cases I operate under those conditions are better served by my smartphone.

They should just install a physical off switch for the battery, along with physical switches for the camera and networking.

What's wrong with the current solution of having a software switch, aside from lack of use/knowledge about it? What's the advantage to making it physical?

Software switches can be controlled remotely without your knowledge. A physical switch requires physical access to the device.

I am just talking about the battery. I don't see any privacy issue there.

Sometimes you really need to make sure there is no power flowing through your device, which you can't be sure of using software when you are trying to fix software problems. Of course I should have said recording devices and networking, rather than just cameras.

Also, true power off guarantees nobody is remotely activating eavesdropping on your device.

Lenovo have a battery disconnect bios option specifically for doing service work.

Maybe the concern there is devices appearing to be turned off but really still running in low power mode? The only way to be sure is to physically interrupt the power supply.

The people writing the software have a vested interest in your battery wearing out so you have to buy a new laptop

Or externalize the camera and networking modules, so that one can pop them in and out like a battery. Yes.

This is why I still use my Thinkpad W520. If I don't need the battery I just take it out until I need it. I hate that we got rid of removable batteries in basically all devices.

My HP G8 zBook Power have this feature as well, but its only accessible through bios. Luckily their BiosConfigUtility64.exe allows changing bios variables from windows, and the change takes effect immediately. My two .bats for 80 and 100% charging limits.

C:\Programs\SP107705\BIOSConfigUtility64.exe /setvalue:"Battery Health Manager","Maximize my battery health"

C:\Programs\SP107705\BIOSConfigUtility64.exe /setvalue:"Battery Health Manager","Let HP manage my battery charging"

Most batteries on laptops are worn out by heat. They really do not like heat, but will take lots of it, when placed and used in unfavorable conditions, which most laptops probably are.

My laptop only heats up in sleep mode, unfortunately.

Heat mostly matters when charging or discharging rapidly, if wear is concerned. So might be less significant than you'd think.

Well, I have a gaming laptop I bought quite new, but second hand, that was almost never used without cabel (I saw the formerly setup) - and the batterie was allmost dead and blown up in size after some months of use. But since it is a gaming laptop - it generated massive amounts of heat under load. I bought a new battery and took care of the heat: and it is still quite good, after roughly the same time and amount of use and I do charge till 100%.

Throttling of CPU and GPU should surely account for 90% of what you describe, coupled with an old, uncycled battery that can't move ions no more.

My two-year-old Dell Inspiron also has a BIOS option for a "Mostly on AC power" charging profile. I'll still give the power cord a yank every now and then and let it run on battery for a while.

dell has had this feature since i was in college twenty years ago.. it's such a great one

I set it via tlp[0]:

    sudo tlp setcharge $start_precent $stop_percent BAT0

[0]: https://linrunner.de/tlp/

His battery is likely worn by recharging cycles. As the computer is being discharged more often.

Nope, its from charging to 100% constantly which accelerates wear massively.

I've had my Lenovo carbon x1 for a few years set to 80% max charge and its battery life is still good.

Battery stats report 480 charging cycles, capacity has dropped only 8 percent from rated.

It’s not charging to 100% that wears batteries out. It’s storage at 100% that does that.

If you charge to 50% and keep it there, it basically last years.

If you use your notebook primarily on AC, battery is charged and kept on “storage” until you unplug from AC. Over the years, this is equivalent to a battery stored on a box.

So, time stored on a box with 50% is better than 80%, which is also better than 100%.

But. If your notebook is used primarily unplugged from AC, that 100% is better than 80%, because you’ll have fewer deeper discharges.

Deep discharges is what form dentrites. Dentrities is what kill lithium batteries.

> If you use your notebook primarily on AC, battery is charged and kept on “storage” until you unplug from AC. Over the years, this is equivalent to a battery stored on a box.

I'm not sure what you mean, by default most laptops will charge to 100% and keep trickle charging it to that level consistently while on AC.

Setting a charge max of 40% would be ideal, but there is point where you want to maintain some level of runtime when removed from AC, so 80% is a reasonable compromise.

It is terrible to limit max battery charge, so max battery charge doesn't decline!!!

Its akin to not driving your car in the redline constantly - sure you can do it, but its going to reduce engine life.

Its the same with batteries, you keep them at 100% constantly they will wear out. Its just a limitation of the technology.

Some devices now try and use "machine learning" to determine max charge, for example iphones will maintain a medium charge throughout the night then do a final top up charge to reach 100% just before you wake up.

> Its akin to not driving your car in the redline constantly - sure you can do it, but its going to reduce engine life.

Yes, of course. That's not the issue, though.

> Some devices now try and use "machine learning" to determine max charge, for example iphones will maintain a medium charge throughout the night then do a final top up charge to reach 100% just before you wake up.

That's different and even opposite from advertising X max charge and only delivering 80% of X as the max charge. What I referred to is a bait and switch, where the manufacturer advertises one thing but provides another. Your example justification, however, is not a bait and switch but aligns the technical MVPs and marketing promises.

The situation is similar to purchasing a fridge that only operates at 80%. All food spoils more quickly, but the fridge lasts longer. If that had been disclosed, instead of the opposite implication from the marketing, then consumers would have almsot certainly made different purchasing decisions. That is why these sorts of things are generally illegal.

In your car example, if a car is advertised with 400 HP but never goes above 320 HP, that's called false advertising. Sure, the engine can get to 400 HP tested on a bench, but that's not why the car was purchased.

Right, so what vendors are doing now is calling batteries consumables that last one, maybe two years with the default 100% charging limit to get max run time on battery.

Consumers can either accept this and pay for a new battery every few years, or if they want they can limit to 80% and get way longer life battery life if they can live with the reduced runtime.

I'm not aware of any vendors claiming x capacity battery with mandatory limiting charging to 80% of x, rather its an option you have the choice to explicitly enable.