Couple of New Lenovo user questions

[davegoodmen]

I am dying to get my X201. I have been waiting everyday thinking whether it will arrived.This will be my first time getting a lenovo so this are like newbie questions.

1. Should I take out the battery, if the battery is full bar and I am plug in to prolong the battery life?

2. Since the X201 does not come with a cd-rom, and I have some cds to install (i.e. M.S. Office2k7), what is the best way to getting cds installed on the computer. I don't have a portable usb cd-rom, and it is only for like 3-4 cds.

[Siddy]

Battery:

You Lenovo will actually tell you how to prolong your battery aging. They suggest leaving the battery a little under charged. There is an option in the power manager to control when the AC will kick in and start charging and when it will stop, ive set mine to 90% - 98%.

If you are going to store a battery, unused, for a while, make sure its not at 100%, take it down to 90 or 80%.

Discs:

You can simply open the CD's on a compouter with a cd player, then copy the contents to a USB pen drive, and then transfer to the new PC. 

-OR- If that doesnt work, because the discs might need to be bootable,

You will have to make disc images, save them to a removable hard drive (pen USB stick or alike), and then transfer them to the new PC, where you mount the images and install as if they were CD's (but they are just images on the CD's on a hard disk).

To make images, you need a program like nero or magicISO (cost money)

To mount images, you need something like daemon tools (free)

[davegoodmen]

Thanks for the reply Siddy.

Do you mean Lenovo automatically set to prolong the battery, or I have to find some info in my Lenovo laptop? Also should i leave the battery out, when the laptop is plug in (and at 95% charged).

[Ken · Accepted solution]

Just depends on how aggressive you want to preserve your battery vs. having usable capacity at a moments notice.

If you rarely plan on using the battery and want maximum battery longevity, then change the custom charge thresholds to something fairly low, like Start charging 40% and Stop charging at 50%. This setting is found in the battery maintenance tab in Power Manager. Of course by doing this  you'll only have 50% of the potential run time available to you. This may or may not be okay in your situation. You can increase the charge threshold at anytime if you know you'll be needing more runtime in the near future. Then drop it back down once that need goes away.

If you do use your battery somewhat frequently, you could change it to: Start=85, stop=90. There is still a good benefit here.

Going below 40-50% will not give you much additional benefit.

There really isn't a need to remove the battery if you follow this guidance unless you use the system in a hot environment. Then leaving the battery in a cool area would help also. Just be aware that if you store the battery, you need to periodically attach it to the system to let it charge back to the 50% point. The battery will slowly lose charge sitting on the shelf. This is normal and the charge lost is recovered once the battery charges back up. This should be done about once every 3 months or so.

I often recommend the 85/90 setting. At day 1, you'll have lower run time than letting it charge to 100, but after a year, you'll have more run time at 90% than you would have if you let your battery charge to 100% for that whole year.

[davegoodmen]

Thank you Ken. I just need my laptop to last around 2-3 hours with basic web surfing and word processor on.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

depending on the win 7 software you got, you can download the Office 2007 trial software from Microsoft.com and then activate it using the serial number you got.

[nakaneku]

Hi, I have a lenovo y560 and I cannot find the battery maintenance tab to change the max charge threshold to 50%. Currently I set "optimize for battery lifespan but I cannot see anywhere to change the max charge" could you please tell me where exactly this is.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

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nakaneku wrote:
Hi, I have a lenovo y560 and I cannot find the battery maintenance tab to change the max charge threshold to 50%. Currently I set "optimize for battery lifespan but I cannot see anywhere to change the max charge" could you please tell me where exactly this is.

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this future is only available on the thinkpad

[oleon16]

Can i use this power management software to lenovo G475 aside from thinkpad? 

[hausman]

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lead_org wrote:

this future is only available on the thinkpad

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There's no need to wait for the future to benefit from this feature if you have a ThinkPad