Recently I noticed my Lemur Pro wasn’t closing up neatly, and the click action of the touchpad had become quite difficult. When I griped about this, somebody said check and see if your battery is swollen. But this machine is barely over a year old. The battery should be fine, right? Batteries in my other laptops (which have all been Macs) lasted years.

As soon as I looked, the bulging of the keyboard and the bottom of the case was obvious. Not sure how I hadn’t already noticed it. I found a replacement battery online, though getting the old “spicy pillow” out was a bit of a nuisance. It was pretty firmly glued in.

Why did the battery fail so soon? I always noticed the Lemur Pro was warm when running and, oddly, stayed warm when I had it closed up and suspended. Heat is not good for a battery. Why was it warm when suspended? Well, I just assumed it’s a kind of a crummy design and that’s just how they all are.

TODAY when I was poking around in System Settings (in Mint Cinnamon, which is what I run on both the Lemur Pro and my Thelio now), I discovered that there are Power Management settings for this, and that I had mine set to never suspend when it was plugged in, even if the case was closed.

Honestly, it had never crossed my mind that there were settings for this. I just assumed it was like those Macs I had before, and they all suspended when they were closed. I usually didn’t shut them down, but just habitually left them plugged in and closed up all the time when I wasn’t using them, and they were fine. I guess I had my Lemur Pro sitting there idling (but not suspended) and staying warm almost continuously for the past year, and the battery couldn’t take that.

Lesson learned. Check your power management settings, especially if you come in from a platform that might work differently.