Recently I received a gift from my uncle – a Fujitsu notebook computer. This laptop comes without any operating system installed, so I had to install Windows followed by the drivers. I noticed that on the driver disk, it had a special utility that can be used to reduce the capacity of the installed battery with the benefit of increasing its overall life span. This is based on the findings that a Lithium-ion battery lasts longer if you do not charge it fully but charge it only up to 70-80% of the full capacity.
On a Fujitsu notebook computer, you can use a battery utility to set the battery to be charged only to the 80% of the full capacity. Here is how:
- Press the Start button, look for Battery Utility and click on the search result. This will launch the Fujitsu Battery Utility.
- Click on the Battery Charge Mode in the Battery Utility.
- In the next screen, it will show the charging mode 80% or 100%. Click on the Charging button.
- In the next window, choose 80% charge mode and click on the OK button.
From now on, whenever you charge your notebook computer by attaching the charging adapter cable, it will not fully charge the battery but will stop at 80% of the full battery capacity. This will obviously reduce the battery run time but if you keep your computer plugged-in most of the time, you will not notice any big difference.
Of course, you can reverse all the settings by following all the same steps in in the fourth step choosing full charge mode instead of the “80% charge mode”. This will return the battery to full capacity and everything will be back as it was before. But this will also shorten the overall life span of the battery.
You can download Fujitsu Battery Utility http://www.fujitsu.com/us/support/