@brazzy said:
@hank miller said:
Sparks. DC voltage doesn't cut off nicely when you remove a battery.
This might or might not be theoretical. I'm not an EE, I
just know that sparks are not a good thing around electronics, so
anything that could produce them are used as a last resort.
I'm not an EE either, but that doesn't sound right. Again: the battery
is NOT CAPABLE of producing more than the given voltage, and I don't
see how you'd get a higher voltage during disconnection - I'm pretty
sure it will cut off quite nicely, i.e. suddenly, and I doubt the
"official" power switch has any different effect. Theoretically, it
could let the power taper off gradually, but I don't see why that would
be necessary. Hardware that needs to do something when the power is cut
(such as the HDs parking their heads) have capacitors to power them. A
special power switch wouldn't help if you have an actual power outage.
"Sparks" is no answer at all, it's a side effect of electricity
bridging a gap between two contacts through air. If you get sparks at
all at the low voltages of a laptop battery, you'd get them as well
when the computer is switched off and the only problem they might cause
is corrosion of the contacts. What you heard about sparks being "bad"
is referring to sparks generated by static electricity, which HAS very
high voltages and can therefore damage unprotected equipment. But
that's not relevant here, as I already mentioned.
I tend to agree, but want to offer an alternate explanation: Its not
the sparks that are bad but the fact that when removing a battery, the
battery could be disconnected momentarily, then reconnected briefly,
then disconnected again. This could potentially cause stress to the
components. Though, probably not. I don't know. I just decided to throw
that out. fwiw, my remote controls don't seem to be affected by battery
removal, Nor does a whole host of other electronic devices that are
battery powered, but don't necessarily have an on-off switch. Aside
from that, the power switch essentially does the same thing as removing
the battery, it opens the circuit.
Just my 0.5¢