Rechargable Battery Story - You are using it everyday

Rechargable Battery! What an incorrect name? In this world there are no real 100% rechargable batteries. Are you saying I am wrong and you are using them every day in almost in every electronic gadget like your Cell phone, Cordless Phone, MP3 Player, Digital Camera? I bet you, they are not really 100% rechargable. Surprised to know why? Keep reading.....


When so called rechargable batteries are charged, most reversible chemical reaction takes place and a minute portion of irreversible chemical reaction also happens. If a battery is rechargable 1000 times, the lost efficiency is 1/1000 time and this happens during every cycle. That is how they will be become unusable after several months or few years or several cycles of charge/recharge.


Some people return the Cordless phone back to the base station after using it every time. Some others plug in the cell phone or the Digital camera or the MP3/iPod every night to top up to the maximum level and feel so happy to see all bars after full charge. This gives an impression that it keeps full charge and you can use it to get most talk time. This is completely wrong!

Here is why !!!!

As we discussed above, there is little loss every time you charge and discharge, this loss happens usually at the one side/end of the electrode. In a complete charge/re-charge cycle, this happens uniformly and the battery gives long life with less number of complete cycles instead of shorter number of too many cycles. So you should always let the charge happens to the full level and let it dry out to 80 or 90% of it instead of recharging it after using it for 10 or 20%.

So is it good to let it discharge/use completely and and then re-charge from 0% to 100%? This is also not correct. Some times deep discharge may kill the battery and and you may not be able to charge again. So it is always best to charge it while it still has 10-20% of charge. If you have 5 bars in your battery indicator, you should charge so soon as you see it is having the last bar.

@ X PM in the night you are thinking before you are to bed: Tomorrow I have a 2 hour conference call and I see my battery is showing half of its charge and it may not last for 2 hours, shall I charge or not?

It is OK to charge occassionally to skip a complete charge-recharge cycle and do a top-off as long as it do not become a habit.

Printer or Printer Cartridge buying FAQs....

Question: I see a deal. If I buy a laptop I get a free printer. Shall I buy it?
Answer: No! Don't buy it. Bargain to see if you get a discount of the printer cost for the laptop.

Question: I see a deal for a cheap printer. I can't imagine I get a printer for so low price. Shall I buy it?
Answer: No! They make you buy those expensive cartridges so frequently which may be the double the cost of that printer in a month and every few months after that.

Question: I see an All-in-one for $1$$. Shall I buy it?
Answer: Probably yes. Why? See the explnation at the end of this article.

Question: I see refill kits for many printer cartridges. Are they good? May I buy?
Answer: Some are good and some don't work after you refill. So how would I know to buy the refill kit or not?

Question: I bought a printer an year back. I remember, it was printing well for several days after I bought it. Now it is not printing. what shoudl I do? Shall I refill the cartridge?
Answer: No! Toss that cartridge and buy a new cartridge. If the cartridge is expensive than the printer, toss the printer and buy a better printer.

Question: I do not print color in my printer to save refill costs. But I surprise to learn today that my printer do not print in color anymore. I hardly printed in color since I refilled it.
Answer: If you remember, when you loaded the cartridge for the first time, it came in an air tight container. probably you might also remember to remove a plastic tab from the cartridge before loading in the printer. Most cartridges do not last more than 4 months whether you use them or not. If your printer is a simple inkjet printer, the cartridge has a sponge in it, which keep in the ink holding. As the cartridge is not in air-tight condition anymore once you load it, water slowly evaporates and leaving the cartridge dried out after several months. This is the reason, we should keep using color also as required. This is not applicable if you empty a cartridge very frequently like every month or so.

Question: Which printer I should buy?
Solution: Before you buy the selected printer, see what cartridges it needs? How much they cost? If they are more than a few dollars a months, (ex: $3 or $4 a month) on an average, then don't buy them.

Question: Which printer should I buy? InkJet or Laser?
Answer: Do yo you it for home/school/personal needs? Buy an inkjet printer. Do you also do lot of College Project work or have Home Office? Then buy an Inkjet Printer and also a cheap Laser printer. Again, see how much that Laser cartridge costs you and is it available easily in the local stores, before you buy.

Question: Which inkjet printer should I buy? All-in-One or just with print only?
Answer: I suggest you to buy an All-in-one, though it is bulky. It comes with scanner, fax, copier, printer functionality. As you have all of them, you save place and their cartridges are relatively cheap and last for long time then simple inkjet printers.

Question: I am looking to Print all my pictures at home? Which is the best printer?
Answer: Printing at home is not economical and you do not get Photo Lab printing results. So I don't suggest to Print a lot of pictures at home. Occasional printing is OK. Any printer can print with a reasonable print quality.

Laptop Battery may be completely dead if you do like this...

Problem: One day I had to run for an appointment and I quickly closed my laptop lid while it was trying to hibernate. The next day I found the battery was dead and I had to replace the whole battery.

Solution: Never do that. Wait till the laptop is completely shutdown. You would ask may I press the power button down to perform a dirty shutdown. But be informed, if you do so, laptop may not boot and might give booting problems later.

Can't click on Desktop Icons OR Can't run applications from Desktop Icons.

Problem: Can't click on Desktop Icons OR Can't run applications by clicking Desktop Icons.

Solution: Kill the process "explorer.exe" from Task manager (press CTRL+ALT+DEL and select Task Manager and go to Processes Tab). Create the same task by switching to "Applications" Tab, click "New Task" and type "explorer.exe" in that and then OK. Your problem is solved!