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Question:

How bad is it for the laptop's battery pack to leave it in all the time?

I work in a place with frequent power outages with my laptop. I would usually take out my battery pack when I work with my laptop for hours on end to extend its life span, but here, that wouldn't make sense, since the power is gone every few minutes. I leave both mains power and batteries connected at the same time to tide me over all the blackouts. I will have to work like this for another two months, about 14 hours a day with the laptop on. Is that going to kill my batteries before their time? Or is the effect not that severe?

Answer:

Running it with the battery install and at 100% full charge hurts nothing as the charge is shut down when it is running off the power adapter. Running it off battery and recharging constantly uses up the number of battery cycles built into a laptop battery and the usual life of the battery if around 3 years under normal use. If it was bad for a laptop to have a battery installed the manufacturers would not make them with batteries or recommend removing a battery when not being used and they do not. I am typing this on one now that is over five years old and the battery has never been remove except for once when upgrading memory modules but I run it off the power adapter except for when needing to be mobile and it still holds over 2 hrs. charge. If there are power outages you need to have the laptop plugged in using a power surge protector to protect the laptops components from shorting out.
Actually manufacturers do recommend that you take the battery out if you are going to leave the computer plugged in for more than two weeks. Below I referenced a great article that gives recommendations on how to extend your battery life and to calibrate it so that your system tray shows an accurate reading of the amount of time you have left before your computer powers of.
it's not too severe, though you will damage your battery faster than usual. two months shouldnt be too detrimental to your laptop, though i'd buy a spare if it's cheap.

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