Tom’s Tuesday Tech Tip: My Battery’s Dead and I Can’t Get Up!
I don’t know which scares me more when I’m outside the U.S. on vacation – ridiculously expensive data/roaming charges or the idea of having my email tempting me every time I reach for my iPhone®. I know how to cut off data/email on that iPhone and how to use Wi-Fi to cut data costs but I’m afraid of forgetting to turn the data off and of giving in to the email temptation.
To avoid all those issues, I purchased a cheap, AT&T dumb-phone that works on just about every global network. I could have activated the expensive data plan but chose not to and only use it to make calls. It’s been a great phone, has been to more fun places in the world than I have, and since I only use it once a year I’m used to it being dead when I pull it out in preparation for a trip.
This year though, when it was time to get charged up, it wouldn’t. I swapped in the spare battery and that didn’t work either. So I did the logical thing – throw away the charger and buy a new one and, you got it, still didn’t charge the batteries. That moment, my CLNC® amigos is when I learned a lesson that can apply to any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant with a smartphone or other electronic device that they’ve had stored for some time.
Lithium-ion batteries run most of our devices today and those batteries, while they can carry a charge for a long time, degrade when they’re stored for a long time. By degrade, I mean lose capacity. By lose capacity, I mean become incapable of holding a full charge.
I read an article which claimed that lithium-ion batteries lose 20% of their capacity after a year of storage – so the longer you own the device, the lower the total capacity. I’ve experienced this will my laptops – the computer outlives the battery. But even more frightening is that storing a dead or discharged lithium-ion battery can put it into “deep discharge state” in which case the battery can never be charged again.
So if your legal nurse consulting business relies on an electronic device using lithium-ion batteries, plan on replacing those batteries every couple of years (think laptops). If you only use that device intermittently (think my travel phone or a back-up/emergency phone) don’t store it with a fully discharged battery and always pull the battery out before you store it (so it won’t trickle-drain).
That way, when you do go to use it, charge it or give it away, it will still have some life left in it.
One thought on “Tom’s Tuesday Tech Tip: My Battery’s Dead and I Can’t Get Up!”
Hey Tom,
I learned that the hard way a couple weeks ago. My laptop wouldn’t charge. I took it into Office Max and asked them to see if it was my charger or battery. I ended up buying a new charger, but the problem was the battery. The new charger wouldn’t charge the battery either. The Office Max man asked me if I ever used it with just the battery. The answer was no. I always kept it plugged in (at least 98% of the time). He said I overcooked the battery and recommended that if keeping a laptop plugged in, to take the battery out unless you intend to use the battery presently. I learned an expensive lesson.
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Keep on techin’,
Hey Tom,
I learned that the hard way a couple weeks ago. My laptop wouldn’t charge. I took it into Office Max and asked them to see if it was my charger or battery. I ended up buying a new charger, but the problem was the battery. The new charger wouldn’t charge the battery either. The Office Max man asked me if I ever used it with just the battery. The answer was no. I always kept it plugged in (at least 98% of the time). He said I overcooked the battery and recommended that if keeping a laptop plugged in, to take the battery out unless you intend to use the battery presently. I learned an expensive lesson.