Disable charging while docked?

[The Shadow]

Hi all,

I'm new around here, so please go easy on me if I posted in the wrong place, asked the wrong kind of question, or any other terribly unforgivable sin.

I use my Surface Pro 3 in the docking station a lot (using it that way right now, in fact). I'm troubled by the fact that whenever it's docked, it's constantly charging, whether I want it to or not - I don't wanna kill my battery prematurely. But if I remove it from the dock, I (obviously) can't use the peripherals connected to the dock, and (here's the stupid part) if I unplug the dock from the wall, then all connected devices stop working, even simple ones like the keyboard (which shouldn't really require external power), so I'm back to square one.

Is there any way to dock the Surface successfully, using all attached peripherals, yet STOP it from charging the battery when I don't want it to?

Thanks in advance!

 

[zhenya]

It's not charging once the battery is full. The logic is smart enough to stop that. I've been using my SP3 in my charging station nearly every day since I purchased it near release day last year and my battery capacity is the same as when new.

 

[The Shadow]

Thanks for your reply. I'm not so worried about charging past 100%; I'm more worried about constantly "topping off" the battery when it has like 70%-80% left. I don't wanna waste valuable charge cycles on that; I'd rather wait until the battery is down to, say, 20%, before charging it at all...

 

[leeshor]

Thanks for your reply. I'm not so worried about charging past 100%; I'm more worried about constantly "topping off" the battery when it has like 70%-80% left. I don't wanna waste valuable charge cycles on that; I'd rather wait until the battery is down to, say, 20%, before charging it at all...

Exactly!

 

[zhenya]

Thanks for your reply. I'm not so worried about charging past 100%; I'm more worried about constantly "topping off" the battery when it has like 70%-80% left. I don't wanna waste valuable charge cycles on that; I'd rather wait until the battery is down to, say, 20%, before charging it at all...

I'm fairly sure that discharging to 70% does not get counted as a charge cycle - otherwise I'd have way more charge cycles than the 118 I have after a year. Small discharge then recharging is not particularly harmful to the battery. Long-term storage at full charge is less than ideal, but of all the ills you could put your battery through, it rates down there pretty low. In my experience the Surface works quite a bit harder typically when docked than when not, as you tend to have accessories and monitors attached to it, so the battery life would be poor, the performance would be reduced, and you'd wear out your battery a lot faster going through 1-2 complete cycles every day compared to a couple of light top-offs.