After about a year of usage maximal charge of my battery dropped by about 40. On Windows, there are some settings that "enhance battery lifespan".
Note
It seems that to enhance the lifespan of your batteries you'll need to:
- Charge it for longer periods (ideally always to full charge)
- Don't charge it to 100%, set full charge to 90-95%
There are no generic tools to configure such behavior --- as it all sits inside BIOS. This question on ubuntu SO helped me to find a solution, but nevertheless, it didn't work on my W530 laptop.
On newer ThinkPads you'll need to use: tcpapi-bat (you might install it from this PPA (it's for ubuntu but also works on Debian.
After install you'll need to insert following into /etc/rclocal.d (it will be called after startup):
tpacpi-bat -s ST 0 80
tpacpi-bat -s SP 0 90
It will do the following: battery will stop charging after charging to 90% ( of current maximal charge) and the battery will start charging only after it is discharged to 80% (which will cause that you will charge it for 10% capacity or greater).
It would be great if I could (for example) inhibit charging for (let's say) 15 minutes after connecting to AC, as I often connect the computer and then decide I need to go somewhere else, which is not healthy for the battery.