Connecting laptop to UPS?

charley007

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Hello friends! I would like an advice on something. I own an Asus laptop which is less than a year old. There is no issue with the laptop at present, have good battery backup an all. I am going to use laptop at office full time and as I don't want any interruption in between, I may need to connect the laptop to power source for the full working time. This is not something I have been doing with laptop at home. The cause of my concern here is that, all the power sources I have access to is connected to a UPS system by Staticon. A colleague told me that connecting laptop to an UPS for long time can damage its battery. I am a little worried about what he said as I don't want my laptop battery to be damaged so easily. I am not an expert, but I am a little confused if what he said is entirely true or not. Can someone here confirm, if a UPS system can negatively affect laptop health or not? Thanks in advance.:)
 
Well I'm not an electrician or anything but I don't think that's correct. Typically, a UPS system will only be beneficial if anything, since they usually condition the power and reduce any spikes or drops that may be present on the line that are damaging to computer components.

---------- Post added at 11:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:56 PM ----------

By the way, laptop batteries simply will not last forever no matter what you do. Fortunately, replacement generic brands are usually $20 on ebay.
 
UPS stands for Uninteruptable Power Supply. Basically what it is a device that keeps the power going in the case of a mains power failure. Obviously if a company is using computers/servers 24/7/365 and their business depends on those computers a power cut can cause all sorts of problems. I have worked in companies that use UPS,s and never had any problems with my laptop batteries.

Crazyman is right as well in as much that more often that not laptop batteries do not last that long anyway. There are charging regimes listed on the internet that are supposed to prolong the life of laptop batteries but I find them to be more of a nuisance and when I have used them it hasn't seemed to prolong battery life.

Some laptop batteries go on and on and on and others pack up within a year or even less.
 
Thank you for the replies. Batteries may not last long, but a laptop battery getting damaged within a year after purchase isn't ideal, is it? I will be happy if it last 2 years or so. :) Anyway it's good to know UPS don't usually cause such issues.
 
Well hopefully your battery will last. But I certainly have had batteries go west before the (UK) mandatory guarantee period has passed. I do not know what the situation is in Canada but I am fairly sure that companies here in the UK do not include the batteries in any guarantees.
 
Leaving your laptop plugged into the mains all the time can degrade some batteries, but using an UPS isn't going to cause any difficulties.

Considering the laptop has a built-in battery, though, an UPS is kind of unnecessary, though it does provide an extra layer of protection between your machine and any power fluctuations (brown-outs or power spikes, though this depends on the quality and build of your UPS).
 
This brings up an interesting question. I don't know much about laptops but I know something about Lithium Ion batteries. There are protected and unprotected types of batteries and I don't know what they use for the laptops.

I remember hearing about some laptops bursting into flames so there must be some unprotected types for laptops and probably cheapos.

My point is if you have protected batteries in your laptop you may not need the UPS but it can't hurt using them because the batteries are protected by over and under charge situations.

Again, the UPS may protect the unprotected batteries as well.
 
There were problems with Li-ion batteries from the mid-90s through to the mid-oughts, but I think nearly all of those problems have been resolved (Samsung's spectacular failure in the news now notwithstanding-- they are aiming for thinner, higher-capacity lithium batteries).

YMMV, you still shouldn't leave your laptop plugged in all the time, though.
 
There were problems with Li-ion batteries from the mid-90s through to the mid-oughts, but I think nearly all of those problems have been resolved (Samsung's spectacular failure in the news now notwithstanding-- they are aiming for thinner, higher-capacity lithium batteries).

YMMV, you still shouldn't leave your laptop plugged in all the time, though.

That's probably when the batteries were all unprotected types. IMO you should be able to leave the PSU plugged in with the protected batteries.
 
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