I get asked all the time about laptop batteries, and being an inquisitive person, I’m prone to long periods of reading to satisfy people’s curiosity about the most overlooked piece of their computer. In going through every single link Wikipedia provides about lithium ion batteries, I can give the following advice on some myths, and also some very bad habits to have.

#1 If I don’t use the battery, it will never fail: False
Lithium ion batteries will fail over time without being used, even if used lightly.

#2 If I keep the battery fully charged, it will last longer: False
Most lithium ion batteries last longer if you keep them at or below 40% charge, which almost never happens.  Worse, is that if you have a laptop fully charged, then leave it in a car, you will destroy the battery in just one year according to many experts.

#3 If you drain the power in your laptop you’ve ruined the battery: False
Lithium ion batteries have a circuit that is designed to keep you from doing this, it’s not fully discharged. Furthermore, most batteries will last for a least 3 months ‘fully discharged’ so to speak, which is when the batteries finally are ‘really discharged’ due to the self monitoring circuit having used all the juice left.

Now, for a few tips that I’ve found to be suggested.

Never leave your laptop in a car.

If you are using a laptop as a desktop, remove the battery and put it back once every 3 months to keep it topped off and at an average of 80% charge.

Every 6 months, take your laptop to someone who has an air compressor, or buy a can of air and blow it in the air outlet. (You’re looking to reverse the flow of air and blow out all the gunk out the holes it came in on.)

Above all, remember these things:

Batteries will fail eventually, they don’t last forever. Lithium ions will last 1-3 years depending on the quality and the amount of time you use it. All indications are that if the battery spends all it’s time in a car, you’ll get less than a year out of it. (This is true for cell phones too.)

Some laptops run way hotter than others, so that cooling pad may just prolong the life of the battery if you are running it as a desktop. The hottest part in your computer, the CPU, will normally run cooler than the interior of a car.

It’s not enough that the UK has socialized health care, which right now is just a quagmire I’m hoping to sidestep in this post. Now all of the UK has banned smoking in all public places.

Public opinion varies on the subject, with Slash formally of GnR saying he must smoke. The sky is falling even further for pubs and also for the makers of beer due to establishments going to vanish due to the smoking ban. Most store owners are not bucking the law, and doing what’s required to ensure they are not fined.

Let’s not forget the grim statistics cited here, that if you don’t quit smoking, the pub owner isn’t going to be able to serve you a cold one… he’ll be dead from your habit.

Maybe Chantix should take this chance to ramp up advertising in England.

I for one know that there isn’t going to be any 100% broadband penetration anytime soon. Living in even states like Florida, or Pennsylvania have taught me that West Virginia isn’t so far off of the map. You could live less than 2 miles outside of a large city like Fort Lauderdale, and not have any broadband coverage, and with WV the same thing.

Now finally the government is starting to see the writing on the wall, that when skewed statistics are the cause of failure in the adoption of broadband, something must be done.

No, not the kind that starts fires, I’m talking about one that looks behind the code on every site that you visit.

I’m a firebug now, I can’t help but to hit F12 now when I’m on every site. I’ve seen the source charts, but this thing blows every other webdev away.

LNP is a fairly new process that the FCC mandated must occur in order to spur competition. Competition is good among the phone companies, otherwise they become lazy fat cats that assume people just want a telephone that never changes.

There is however some myths regarding LNP, dashed in with some failures to understand that for the most part, every carrier in the United States is required to port numbers to another local carrier. These myths, or fallacies only help the carriers that refuse to port numbers and must be addressed.

In West Virginia there is a phone company called Frontier that wishes to hold their customers hostage, lest they lose that all powerful phone number they’ve had for the last 10 years. Frontier refuses to port phone numbers, violating LNP laws, irregardless of fines, revocation of licenses and very, very hard slaps on the wrists by the FCC.

Further, other local phone companies won’t attempt to port a number due to the refusal of Frontier to follow the law. It’s assumed that since a CLEC can’t get a number ported that you should just give up, go on vacation and forget about it.

I’m here to educate everyone that has the following misconceptions about transferring a number, if you are a reseller of a voip service:

1. My carrier can refuse to port my landline to another landline carrier
Near zero carriers have a waiver to say they have no requirement to. If they refuse, versus saying they don’t have to, they don’t have a waiver.

2. The carrier I’m transferring to will get in trouble for not even trying to port
Your carrier doesn’t have to attempt to port if the other carrier has been breaking the law. A complaint filed will get the ball rolling.

3. LNP isn’t a right
LNP is a right, that has been in the works since 1998, and mobile LNP came into reality into 2003/04.

4. The complaint process is a lengthy form that only lawyers can fill out
The complaint form is simple, takes less than a minute and can be filled out online.

5. If my CLEC can’t get it ported, filing a complaint will do nothing
False, the carrier MUST respond to the complaint, and in writing. Once you get the response, giving it to the new CLEC will ensure they will put through the request.

Filing a form is an important first step in making sure a rogue carrier doesn’t try to stifle competition, and that’s exactly what they are doing. There is no reason to not file a complaint, since if you don’t, the FCC will never know the state of the laws that they spent millions implementing.

In conclusion, doing nothing is just mind blowing. You are allowing the monopoly to continue, so why just sit on your hands, or kick back and do nothing? File a complaint, get the process started, and while the old phone company can charge a fee for the porting, your cost savings to the new phone company will be substantial.

I won’t even mention how grateful either your customers will be that you do so much for them.

Update:
Apparently things were misunderstood, Frontier doesn’t refuse to port. There is a problem with a particular company that they cannot win 911 approval to service that area. A customer service rep didn’t know the whole story and the person that told me this information took it at face value as gospel.