The first process of any DIY project is the tear down process. Breaking apart the battery casing can be a chore. The first step in the process is peeling away the stickers and exposing the seam of the battery. This is where you split the two halves that have been glued together. Good luck. Here is one tip, small snipers make the job take a long time. Try to keep the casing intact to be able to use for the reconstruction. This will make the finished device look less threatening to others.

After the cover is removed and all excess plastic is out of the way, you should see the individual cells. Make sure to carefully pop the cells off the glue base and do not short circuit any wires. It may be helpful to make a diagram of the wire leads before fully disconnecting the wires. A diagram can be useful when it comes time to reconnect to the charging circuit. The next phase of the rebuild is probably the most expensive and time consuming. Check out the video that shows the process. Remember each laptop battery is different and this article only show you the basic steps.

Video by Kipkay, Check out his Youtube Channel

Finding the appropriate sized battery can be a strenuous process. The process looks at battery size, cell capacity, and several other things. The internet searching may take almost as long as the shipping. Of course, this is the most time consuming because you have to wait for the shipping. Once you have the battery cells securely in your hand it is time for installation. The first step of the rebuild is prepping the batteries for install. Verify that the batteries are in the correct position and orientation compared to the diagram you made before.

Start by grouping the batteries with positive and negative sides. Hook the battery groups up to the power leads as the diagram you created states. Follow the diagram step by step, soldering as you go. Generally you will attach one group to the red power lead, followed by the groups of batteries in series and ending with the black power lead at the rear. After the soldering is complete and the wires are all done, congrats you have a battery. Add some protection by replacing the plastic parts you took off.

And last but not least… Don’t forget to buy your replacement cells from us at http://www.batteriesinaflash.com/assembly-cells/li-ion – The most common cell used is the 18650 Li-Ion Battery. Be sure to replace the cells with the same type of battery size.

As fun as a project as this seems, is it really worth the time and effort? It is worth the experience, but unless you replace all of the parts you probably are not going to get your money’s worth. It is hard to make a self built battery match refurbished or brand new batteries performance. On the plus side, it is a cool experiment that may earn you some respect. It is not something that should readily be pursued for a long term use.

WARNING: This blog and video are for informational purposes only and should not be attempted by anyone unless you have the proper equipment and understand the risk involved. The steps outlined are not exact steps and only general guidelines. Lithium Batteries are very volatile when not handled carefully and properly. We do not assume any responsibility for the attempt of this project.

Batteries are an essential laptop element. The technology available today, and the vast amounts of power spots make batteries an under the radar risk. However, if you are in a car ride, or an eleven hour plane ride to Japan a battery is what you need. Of course, everyone knows the basic tips. Stuff like, dim your screen, minimize processes, disable the wireless and so on. These tips can help get that bit of extra playtime on your flight, but there are more.

Processes eat up a chunk of the processor, which in turns eats up battery life. However, what some people may neglect to realize is that the hardware is one of the biggest components to battery use. Power management utilities can help reduce the impact of internal hardware on the battery life. Some ways to optimize your hardware is by disabling unused ports and components such as VGA, PCMCIA, USB, or Ethernet. If you are on a plane or car ride, disable the wireless too.

The process for disabling these components is right in the Device Manager. Another technique is to create hardware profiles that you can switch to in certain scenarios. These profiles will remember which processes and hardware ports to shut off when selected. These profiles can be set up to turn off selected components to optimize your battery life. Third party software can also help in this type of function. An additional feature of some software is turning the display off instead of going to a screen saver.

These techniques help out for each charge, but what about the longevity of the battery itself? Damaging the battery means a shorter life span. Two things hurt a battery more than anything, wrong amperage on the AC adapter, and heat. Overheating can be a major problem, and can reduce the battery longevity severely. To avoid the heat, use a cooling pad for your laptop. Avoid keeping the laptop on fabrics or any surface that blocks the cooling fan. Another factor to overheating is dust. If the fan is clogged, the laptop is not being cooled.

Keeping a neat workspace can reduce the amount of dust that attacks your system. Room temperature is the ideal setting for batteries. Try not to store the battery in areas where the temperature gets above eighty degrees Fahrenheit. If the battery is not room temperature, let it return to room temperature before using. If you are using an AC adapter, consider taking the battery out while doing so. Also, remember to clean the contacts periodically with rubbing alcohol. All of these techniques will help keep a healthy battery for longer.

If you are in the market for a new laptop, you can consider certain upgrades to maximize your battery life. When buying, look for ultra low voltage processors that use less power. Solid state storage devices have less moving parts and require less energy. Finally, an LED display uses less energy than the traditional LCD screens. If you can help it, go for a smaller screen, smaller equals less power used, and more battery life. Finally, make sure you purchase a good battery. Knowing your batteries will help you choose a good battery.

On Wednesday the 23rd of June BatteriesInAFlash.com (along with about 200 other companies) will be exhibiting at the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce Business Expo. The Expo is designed to give Chamber members an exclusive opportunity to present their products and services, network and get to meet the other members of the Las Vegas Business Community.

The Expo will be taking place at the World Market Center in Building C, with about 1700 people expected to attend to meet the 200 or so exhibitors. Admission is $10.00 and the Expo is open to the public from Noon till 5:00pm.

We hope to see you there, it will be a good opportunity to showcase the caliber of Business and Industry that Las Vegas has to offer.

Congratulations to the winner. There are going to be more to come to so if your not a Fan now is the time to become one. Visit us at http://www.facebook.com/BatteriesInAFlash and become a Fan today.

As a thank you to our Facebook fans we’re giving away a Sony NV-U44 GPS unit to one of our facebook fans on the 1st of March 2010. We’ll be posting a video of the drawing here on our blog on Monday the 1st of March at 4pm Pacific Standard Time.

As long as you’re a BIAF fan by February 28th you’ll be in the draw.

Just log into your Facebook account, go to our facebook page and click the “Become a Fan” button beside our name.

Features of the NV-U44 GPS unit:

• 3.5-inch anti-glare LCD touchscreen with 4:3 standard aspect ratio
• SiRF star III GPS receiver with POSITION plus
• TTS (Text to Speech): The device utilizes spoken commands ensuring you are able to follow the directions by street names.
• 3D Junction Guide: The device’s dual view capability displays dynamic route information, in addition to the conventional map view, to provide an even clearer view of what’s at the next turn or in a highway merge scenario, which junction to take.
• The new photo viewer feature turns the screen into a picture frame. You can view your digital images by inserting a Memory Stick into the Memory Stick Pro Duo slot.
• Battery life: Up to 2 hours
• Battery charging time: 3 hours when on, 1.5 hours in standby mode
• Dimensions: 3.7 x 2.1 x 4.3 inches
• Color: Silver

Read more about the NV-U44

Employees of Batteries In A Flash.com inc and their immediate family members are not eligible for entry into this draw.

Americans use around 2 Billion disposable batteries a year, one of those numbers that’s big enough for most of us to have no actual concept of it, but it’s a lot.  If you find yourself being a larger than normal part of this statistic the obvious solution would be to use a rechargeable battery.

Generally speaking a rechargeable battery will save you money over the long run, you can recharge most of them up to 1000 times before you have to replace them.  The cost-saving benefits of this are clear when you compare it to disposable batteries.  Though disposables can often have a higher mAh rating they just get tossed out when you’re done with them.

Good in theory but horridly inconvenient

One of the major disadvantages of the rechargeable batteries has been that they don’t come ready to use.  Typically you would need to fully charge your batteries before you used them so you wouldn’t be able to just go to a store and pick some up and carry on.  Often we just don’t have the time or forethought to have some spare charged batteries lying around.

Another issue with rechargeables is that they never really stay charged. After a year or so they’d be generally useless to you and need to be recharged, now however there is a new type of battery that has a much lower self discharge characteristic than previously.

Your standard NiMH rechargeable is below 60% capacity after about 2-3 months and essentially dead after a year.  The Graph above shows the discharge rate for the eneloop battery vs one of Sanyo’s other Nickel Metal rechargeables.

Ready to go rechargeables

Hybrid NiMh cells offer the best of both worlds, you can use them out of the pack but you also get to do the environmentally friendly thing and re-use them.  If polar bears had the capacity to vocalize their appreciation they no doubt would.

Three of the more popular types of these batteries are the Rayovac Hybrid, Ultralast Hybrio and the Sanyo Eneloop series.  Each has essentially the same characteristics, with Eneloop being the forerunner and probably the best marketed.

The hybrids are marketed as being a viable replacement for digital camera batteries, for instance the energizer ultimate lithium (a disposable) makes claims to somewhere around 640 photos worth of battery life.  The Rayovac Hybrid battery states that it will do 400 photos.  Your general use alkaline would struggle to do more than 100.

Also there are the cost savings to be considered. For 8 of the Rayovac Hybrids and a charger you’d pay $23.95.  Four Energizer photo lithium batteries would be around $17.95, and you can only use them for those 630 photos before throwing them away.

The bottom line being that while no rechargeable can hold the power of their high end disposable counterparts, the pre charged rechargeables at the least make going the greener route a more convenient prospect.

Check out this show on The Discovery Channel called The Colony. It’s about what it would be like to recolonize the world after a apocalyptic event occurred and left the world abandoned. Watch as they discover how to use batteries to capture power. This is a simple configuration that takes all the energy from the battery bank and pass it into the inverter to convert it to a usable 120V for standard lights and appliances.

The funny thing is that something so simple, generally abundant and accessible becomes a dire need and can soon cause panic when without it. As individuals, we take for granite what we have and forget that it all could be gone one day when we don’t respect our environments. The colonist soon learn to take there resources serious and use them sparingly.

Check out the website at The Colony on Discovery.com

Fortunately alot of e-commerce sites usually use alternative means to process credit cards and will be okay. Paypal and Google Checkout are up and running. Reports show that Authorize.net is partially back up and running.

Authorize.net has set up a twitter account to keep customers up to date. Follow Authorize.net on Twitter

Previously in, Chatting with The Professionals, I stated that I would setup a one on one with with Tony Hsieh and I did. He invited us to come and hang out at a Zappos function to learn about Culture.

Tony was very insightful and inspired many questions that I ended answering myself. For every question I asked, his reply was a question. I felt like I was talking to Yoda. He effectively had me answer my own questions while he was guiding me. After my lesson was done, we started talking to everybody about there position and passion. This really wasn’t hard because so many people came to us to talk with us and find out who we were. Zappos employees are definitely outgoing and fun to hang out with. We had a great night and a lot of drinks… Enjoy the video…

Once a reality I scoffed at and had not interest in, has now become an everyday reality. I had always thought, who would spend there day putting excerpts of there of there lives on a website for others to read. Then I decided to try it for myself to become more socially involved with the customers and individuals that we work with everyday. That’s when I got caught in the Twine of Twitter. Before I go one, Please tweet this blog if you feel kind. I want to add more followers. Follow me on Twitter – @BatteryMan. In turn I will follow you. Thank you!!

So does my previous statement make me a hypocrite?

It definitely sounds that way to me; however, I don’t believe that to be the case. I was misinformed on all of the benefits of using Twitter. It’s has all of the benefits of social networking without the trouble of writing long, thought consuming blogs like this one. By the time I am done it will probably have taken me at least a hour and half to write this from start to end. I type slow and change my mind to much..

What changed my mind?

I subscribed to a number of social network newsletters like SiteProNews and SEO News to help me stay update to date with the latest internet trends. Over the span of my subscriptions I have used a lot of there suggestion and one that I resisted using was Twitter to promote your business and yourself. I also subscribed to Wired magazine that always has great articles of people making significant advances in there fields. Once again, I noticed the mention of Twitter from such influential people like President Obama, Tony Hsieh from Zappos, Steve Jobs and so on. Determined now to build my Twitter community and new people, I have been reaching out with thoughts, information and personality.

Information is next to Godliness!

While the saying “He Who Has the Gold Makes the Rules” still remains true. I believe a new era is upon us and a wise man once said “If knowledge is power, then a god am I!” -The Riddler (Batman Forever). While that was pretty funny what I just said I do believe it to be true. Information of who we are, what we are and will become is the most important factor to growing as an individual and a company. That sounds a little strange so I will explain.

Simply put, if I capture the what people feel, think and want and in turn provided them with a little of that then I have succeeded as a business. Reaching out LISTENING, Responding and Reacting to individuals helps build trust between them and me. In a world of delusions it’s hard to trust people, companies or even a government. Our lives have become engulfed with new technologies but we are still slaves to our 5 senses and primal instinct that ultimately want to be satisfied. I’m not only trying to build a brand but Customer Relationships. Follow me