For starters, this is one of those problems that tends to bother more women than men, because men lose their high frequency hearing at a much earlier age than women. Battery chargers typically include a transformer and some power IC’s, at least a bridge rectifier. There’s a lot of potential for humming and whistling with transformers, but they can go on operating that way for years without failing. In all cases, the acoustic behavior of your AC power adapter and charger may naturally vary with the quality of the power from the utility, and the feed voltage if you are traveling.
Older notebooks were equipped with hardware only battery management schemes that controlled both charging and battery operation. All new laptops ship with ACPI (Advanced Configuration Power Interface) which is a marriage between BIOS routines that monitor board level charging and device activity, and the operating system. There’s usually a power user profile that just runs full out with no consideration of battery life, a number of special purpose profiles, such as running a DVD movie for a sole task, and a miserly setting that cuts performance to a minimum and puts devices like the hard drive to sleep when not in frequent use.
You can micro-manage these profiles to suit your needs, and you can always go into the settings and override them or change the profile at any time. The most useful trick to remember for running on battery is how to brighten or dim the LCD screen using the the function screen. Screen brightness is a serious power drain (you’re essentially powering a small fluorescent lightbulb) and in most indoor usages, strategic choice of where you sit can add time to your battery life. When troubleshooting battery life issues, you may want to run a power management profile that doesn’t come up to your expectations for performance for a few battery cycles just to help diagnose the problem.
The newer the laptop, the smarter the charging logic, and it won’t want to try putting a charge into a battery that may damage either the battery or the notebook itself. There are also fuel gauges built into some newer batteries that simply disable the battery when it reaches it’s planned cycle life.
Does Battery Get Hot? Recently there have been a spate of high profile stories in the media about laptop batteries catching fire. This wasn’t caused by normal heating due to charging. The problem was in the manufacturing process of the individual cells, where apparently some contamination led to internal short circuits that could cause the battery to overheat even if it wasn’t in use. Battery packs usually include a temperature cut-off circuit, that will halt battery charging or discharging if it really overheats. In some cases, the battery will not be usable afterwards because the cut-off acts like a circuit breaker that can’t be easily reset.
Latch Locks Tight? It’s impossible to see what’s going on with the connector contact inside the battery compartment once the battery on laptop is installed, so the only indicator you have to proper installation (aside from normal operation) is the condition of the latch. If the latching mechanism doesn’t show a positive close by clicking back to the relaxed position, try reinstalling the battery. Some laptops have a manual battery lock that is operating separately from the latches, and which will not lock unless the battery is installed properly. If the latches refuse to click closed on their own, remove the battery again, visually inspect for any bulging or distortions in the package, and check the connector for damage.
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