Why Does Your Laptop Battery Deteriorates

My Dell Inspiron 630m is 7 months old (I've blogged about it here). It belongs to the company I work with. Before I even use a laptop, I was using an old Pentium 3 500MHz Optiplex to do all kind of stuff including developing the company's website. For me, as long as it is a computer, I can do a lot of things with it.

After 7 months of usage, shortly after Dell recalls it's 4 million laptop batteries (Click Here to read about My Dell Laptop Survived The Battery Recall, I got this message on my Dell laptop:

It had just been 7 months, why is it that my battery's life is coming to its end? So, I clicked on the more information link to get more information.

Oh no! my laptop battery is not covered under the warranty. What did I do wrong? Is the battery manufacturer is trying to get extra profit by reducing the battery's life span?

I was losing 2 hours of battery usage compared to when I first got my hand on the laptop. I also noticed the past few weeks, my Dell laptop is generating some excessive heat but I ignored it because here in Malaysia, it is always hot and humid. Little do I realized that heat dissipation consume a lot of energy thus reducing it's life span.

Laptop batteries are expensive. Being dissapointed, I searched for some resources which hopefully could revive back my poor Dell laptop battery. I found this article:

How To Prolong Lithium-Based Batteries

Based on my reading from the above article, I've concluded what I've done wrong:

1. Heat: I contained my laptop from dissipating it's heat. My house is really warm and humid. I'll sweat like crazy if the ceiling or the standing fans is not operating. What I should have done: Only use my laptop in a cool place or in an air conditioned room. Keep it COOL!
   
2. Choose between Battery or AC Power: I'm just too lazy to took out my batteries while pluggin in to the AC Power simultaneously. I spent countless of hours on AC Power while neglecting my batteries. The laptop just baked the batteries and I thought it wouldn't do no harm. What I should have done: I should have just stored away my laptop battery in a cool safe place and use the AC Power adaptor instead.
3. Charging Up and Fully Discharge: I thought the way to make a laptop battery longer was to discharge it frequently so that it doesn't remain dormant. I was constantly charging the batteries at it fullest. Lucky it didn't burned out. What I should have done: I shouldn't frequently rely on my batteries since my house has extra electricity cord all over. In my office, I don't do mobile computing much often, my laptop is always plugged in most of the time. My batteries were suppose to be just on standby whenever I needed to go mobile. That's it..
   

Since the damage is already done. I can only minimize the damage and make sure that my spare battery (I'm considering to buy one) would not go to through same thing again. I hope by sharing this experience, I hope my readers would appreciate take care of their laptops better than what I've done.

My Dell Laptop Survived The Battery Recall

A colleague of mine last week asked around if there was anyone that is using a Dell laptop. He told me that Dell was recalling back laptops. I thought it was no big deal until I read this. I then immediately checked my laptop to see if my Dell Inspiron 630m battery needs to be handed over or not. I wasn't so happy if I needed to hand over my stuff to someone because I know I wouldn't get it back so soon. It is almost like my car where it has been stored in a warehouse waiting for my insurance claim repair for more than a month already. Now the car workshop couldn't give me a time estimation over my car repair eventhough they are for sure will get the money from the insurance company. Companies are so corrupted these days.

Back to Dell Laptops. From my experience, laptops can get very hot when they are crunching a lot of datas. They also get hot when you use the CD ROM and if the air ventilation on the side near the CPU is blocked. If you live in a country where the atmosphere has a high level of humidity, it can get even hotter. So, it is recommended that you use your computer or laptop in an air conditioned room if you want maximum performance. Well, that would compromise my mobility because in my bedroom, I don't have air conditioner, only a small fan.

Never mind that. Here's a few shots of my Dell Laptop Inspiron 630m and let's see if my battery needs to be replaced or not:

My Dell Laptop Model

I've removed my battery to check out the battery model.

Logged on to Dell Battery Recall.

Compared my Dell laptop battery and..


my Dell laptop battery doesn't match.

So, I don't have to return my laptop and I'm saved by a Korean battery. I happen to love watching to Korean Soap Drama. I've never noticed that my laptop battery is made in Korea. Now I know. Funny how we didn't even notice the thing in front of us until when something happen.

SEO-I Should Practice More Of It

As someone who is practicing blogging and website writing as a hobby, the excitement of finding my pages and writing in search engines is just exhilarating. recently, I found my page to rank first in MSN Search:

I read about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) all the time since I've subscribed to a couple of SEO blogs on my RSS reader. However, I seem to spend more time reading and submerge in the topic. I should have start practicing while still keeping myself updated about it. Discipline is an area where I still lack. Maybe I should join the military to get hold of 'discipline' more firmly..Nahh..I'm not joining the military. I wouldn't qualify..I think.. :-p

Success Tip from #1 Best Selling Author Mike Litman

My weekend is over. So, it's going to be a new week tomorrow. Let's look at this awesome to stay motivated ahead.

Mike Litman, recently called "the Next Tony Robbins" unveils a success tip that has changed his life as well as the lifes of thousands of others.

Have a fantastic week ahead.

Bumped Into Kidino

This morning, while walking to get to my office. I passed by Starbucks Cafe, Amcorp Mall (where my office is located) and then saw someone whom I met way back in 2004 during an event I participate called The Total Wealth Seminar conducted by Marco Robinson. At first I thought I mistakenly recognized him for someone else, so I shot him a comment on his blog. He replied back and said it was him alright. After lunch, I tried and search for him before bumping into him on the escalator. Kidino is a rare breed of online entrepreneur who quited his job and ventured into the online business full time. He makes money selling digital products, online web tutorials, affiliate marketing, Google Adsense and many more. While he was at Starbuck, he manage to make out this amazing salesletter telling about Mike Filsaime latest product. In the world of Internet marketing, Mike Filsaime is a big shot.

I envy so much of what Kidino can do. Of course I know that he spent years learning, doing and perfecting what he has achieved right now. As a jack of all trade, I think I'm not moving ahead these days. I need to change and the change has to come from within. I'm thinking of finding a mentor but I'm afraid that I couldn't commit on it. In another perspective, I think blogging is now becoming a career. You can make a full time income as proven by a number of people committed to blogging. Problogger is one of the big shot in the world of professional blogging. I took on Problogger Quiz and here's my result:

I'm just blogging as a hobby. Well, it is fairly true enough. I need to go pro. I need to change. I'm changing it NOW!

What is Microenterprise?

Let's go back to business shall we? I just read in my local newspaper about a government bank will be providing microfinancing. We all know that electronic gadgets are getting smaller and smaller, big companies are outsourcing their operation to smaller companies, and small is cute. However micro for me sounds to small. So, what is Microenterprises?

According to the newspaper I read; "Microenterprises are those employing fewer than five employees with an annual turnover of RM200,000 to RM250,000." That would mean I'm working for a microenterprise company since in my office, only 4 person is occupying the space. Small is simple, easy to manage and maximizing everything that we've got.

Which one would you prefer? A big corporate environment, a small and medium enterprise or a microenterprise? I preferably would go for microenterprises at this moment (I'm actually part of it though).

This Flash Movie is So Cute!

After spending an awesome weekend, I'm still in the mood of a holiday. Here's a video that could cheer you up and make you say, "How cute!".

Dont you just love cute little thing? ;-D

Your BroadBand Connection Slow? Try Using This..

I lost count how many times I have complained about my internet connection. Lucky for me, since I'm using a laptop. I have these options to go online:

• I have a wireless internet connection at home (WEP encrypted)
• I have a wireless internet connection at my office (also WEP encrypted)
• I have a wireless hotspot account using TMNet Hotspot
• I have a free TimeNet account (There's a Star Buck just down at my office shopping mall building)
• I can just go and connect to a free wireless internet connection at my favourite shopping malls around KL

However, I don't really like surfing the internet at public places so the 2 places I often online is at home and my office. Sometimes, well a lot of the time actually, the internet slows down. After reading what LiewCF wrote about OpenDNS, I tried and configured my wireless router. I hardly feel any difference but probably because of the psychological affect of what OpenDNS has wrote, it does feel a bit quicker. You can try OpenDNS for yourself:

Happy safe surfing..

I Now Use PF Blogging Editor Tool

I just created several other blogs. There are a few blogs that I've created is targeted to a very specific niches in order to monetize it. As long as I could get a few extra dollars using Adsense, I think there's nothing wrong with that. You should read about Article Underground as it tells you about why hand created website is much more valuable than software generated one. Anyway, writing articles is hard work for me. I can't write a lot of articles because I'm not trained at it yet. I'm practicing it at the moment to focus on writing more. At least it will keep me occupied rather than just reading crap about internet marketing.

Why use a blogging editor tool? Basically tools are created to save time so that you can focusing on doing things that is more important. It is also called 'leverage'. By leveraging, you can do more than what you are capable of. Who doesn't want that, right? So, here's my blogging tool that I use:

Performancing Firefox is one of top rated blogging editor. I'm still getting the hang of using this tool. I used to log in to my blogger account, write in the post section, preview it and then post. Now I don't have to log into my account anymore, the software does that for me. It's integrated with my Firefox Browser so I can just blog away while I'm surfing a page. It's very convenient. My only hope is that my blogger account or any other blog accounts that I need to log in, doesn't get hacked by some bad guys. Try and have a go on Performancing Firefox.