Follow These Expert Tips to Store Your Electric Yard Equipment the Right Way This Summer
Summer is here, and that means it's finally time to enjoy your garden once again. But getting the most out of your outdoor space means maintaining it, and that means having the right tools. Between lawn mowers, string trimmers and other important lawn gear, you probably have a familiar problem -- how do you keep your electric tools safe when you aren't using it? You need to make sure that your tools are ready when you need them, and that means doing more than just throwing them into a shed and forgetting about them.
Lawn mowers, string trimmers, pole saws and other garden essentials have become increasingly electrified in recent years. Acccording to a report by AP News, 'Stanley Black & Decker, a leading maker of outdoor products, estimates that the volume of electric-powered landscaping equipment that North American manufacturers shipped went from 9 million units in 2015 to over 16 million last year, an over 75% increase in the past five years.'
While maintenance for battery-powered equipment is less involved than that for their gasoline counterparts, there are still some steps you should follow to make sure your gear is ready now that peak mowing season is upon us.
How to store electric yard and outdoor equipment
I spoke with experts from some of the top brands of electric outdoor equipment to learn the best tips for properly storing battery-powered outdoor equipment. While the tips below are a good starting point for getting your electric equipment ready for summer, it's always important to check your equipment manufacturer's recommendations to ensure proper care is taken.
1. Keep your battery charged
Battery-powered leaf blowers are perfect for quick clean-ups around the patio
Chris Wedel/CNET
Battery care is paramount in ensuring the power cell can function properly and output the correct voltage and amperage to operate a device. While you may think CNET's top-performing, battery-powered lawn mower, the Ego Power Plus 21-inch Select Cut XP or a chainsaw such as the Husqvarna Power Axe 350i, can be placed in a shed and be fine, there are necessary steps you should take to ensure the battery isn't damaged over time.
'Before putting your battery away, make sure it's charged to around half capacity, ideally between 40 to 50%,' said Chris Richert, product manager for handheld battery tools at Husqvarna.
As an example of different equipment requiring different storage solutions, robot lawn mowers have non-removable batteries and usually have special instructions for how to store them during prolonged periods out of use.
Angel Feng, the global PR manager at Mammotion, maker of the excellent Luba 2 mower, said, 'It's crucial to fully charge the batteries before storing them, as this helps prevent deep discharge. Store the equipment in a cool, dry place, ideally at temperatures between 32 degrees Fahrenheit and 68 F (0 degrees Celsius and 20 C). It's also advisable to check the batteries periodically and recharge them every few months to maintain their health.'
2. Cleaning and inspection
Battery-powered yard equipment allows for the freedom of gas versions but without the fumes or noise.
Chris Wedel/CNET
Outdoor yard equipment can get dirty after cutting trees, branches, grass, weeds and more. The heavy-duty work can also cause damage and dings on the tools. So, taking the extra time to thoroughly clean the tool and check that nothing vital is damaged is important. This will ensure that when summer rolls around, your tools are ready for all of the outdoor projects.
Dan Vessell, residential product manager at Husqvarna, echoed this. 'Cleanliness of your equipment before storage helps keep them in optimal condition,' Vessell said.
'Remove any dirt, debris, or grass clippings that may have accumulated during use,' Milwaukee Tool Senior Manager of Product Marketing Katy Springfield said. 'This helps prevent corrosion and ensures that your equipment is in top condition when spring arrives.'
Milwaukee has grown from a tool company to an all-around battery-powered equipment brand.
Chris Wedel/CNET
Springfield added that the extra work can prevent corrosion.
'After cleaning, inspect each piece of equipment for any signs of damage, such as worn-out components,' she said.
To clean your battery-operated equipment, Vessell suggests using warm water, mild detergent, and a soft-bristled brush. Also, be sure to dry the equipment before putting it away to prevent rust. Springfield also cautioned against using oil and solvents on your batteries because' these can make the plastic casing brittle and prone to cracking, which poses a risk of injury,' she said.
3. Maintenance and storage
A dedicated storage shed is great for yard equipment to keep it clean and any debris out of your garage.
Chris Wedel/CNET
With batteries charged to the proper levels and the equipment cleaned up, it's time to store it. Smaller, removable batteries can be much easier to store as these types take up less space and are more manageable. But this doesn't mean it's OK just to leave the batteries anywhere.
I keep all the outdoor equipment I can in a Keter Artisan storage shed. While it's ventilated and dry, and keeps everything secure, it isn't insulated from the cold. So, if you, like me, live in an area that experiences drastic temperature fluctuations, you'll need to find another place to store your batteries during colder months.
'Store the battery in a temperature range of 41 F to 77 F to avoid extreme conditions that can impair performance,' Richert said. 'A dry, frost-free area is best,'
He adds that you should avoid areas where temperature fluctuates, such as attics and garages. Instead, consider bringing them indoors or to a cool, dry area like a heated garage or well-ventilated shed. Removing the batteries from the tool and charger is also best to avoid damage or overcharging.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Android Authority
15 minutes ago
- Android Authority
Max quietly added 50% more commercials to your stream
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR Streaming providers are adding more commercials, as recently confirmed for Prime Video. It turns out that Max already did the same thing earlier this year. Back in February, Max raised ad loads from 4 minutes an hour to 6 minutes an hour. Inflation sucks, but at least when a company directly raises prices, the impact is transparent. A lot of times, though, the effect is obscured by companies minimizing actual price hikes, and instead just giving us less for our money — you might see this at the grocery store in the form of sizes getting smaller. With streaming media, a company can achieve the same thing by reducing the quality of the service it offers, and one to do that which is a lot more subtle than dropping half your licensed content is just by squeezing in more ads. Last week we heard about Amazon's Prime Video increasing the amount of advertising it showed from 2–3 minutes an hour to 4–6 minutes. We didn't love that, but it turns out Amazon is far from alone here, and PCWorld has uncovered evidence that Max (or soon to once again be HBO Max) has quietly done basically the same thing. Like Netflix and other streamers, Max offers a variety of plan tiers. There's the premium 4K option for $21 a month and the standard 1080p plan at $16, both ad-free. But then there's also an ad-supported basic plan (still at 1080p, at least), available at the reduced rate of $10 a month. If you visit Max's support page for questions about advertisements on the service, today you'll find the company telling customers: If you subscribe to the Basic with Ads plan, ads will play before and during shows and movies (about 6 minutes of ads per hour). But what PCWorld noticed is that this number has gotten a bit higher over the last few months. When the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine visited the page on February 16, Max was singing a different tune: If you subscribe to the Basic with Ads plan, ads will play before and during shows and movies (about 4 minutes of ads per hour). When the site next archived the page on February 28, the current 6-minute language was in place. Max and Amazon are far from alone in increasing the ad load on subscribers, and the practice is more or less standard across the industry. But it's one thing to just get the impression that you're sitting through more ads than you used to, and another when a company clearly communicates what you should expect like this. For that, we have to give Max at least a little credit. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Forbes
29 minutes ago
- Forbes
Cisco Live 2025 Touts Cisco's Platform Advantages For Enterprise AI
Cisco president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel presents at Cisco Live 2025. At last week's Cisco Live in San Diego, CEO Chuck Robbins said that it would be the most important Cisco Live ever and announce more innovations than ever. Having attended a ton of these events and followed the company closely for many years, I can tell you that the show mostly fulfilled that promise. More than that, it reinforced Cisco's areas of strategic focus in infrastructure, the modern workplace and digital resiliency. It's clear that Cisco is working hard to leverage its platform advantages across networking, security, observability, compute and even silicon to support agentic AI workloads. This should help customers simplify operations while maintaining the highest levels of network security and AI safety. As I pointed out in my analysis of the Cisco Partner Summit held late in 2024, Cisco was very deliberate — perhaps a touch slow — in establishing its overarching AI strategy. By now, though, I'm impressed with how quickly the company has been moving to bring this strategy to fruition. Let's dig into the details of what Cisco is doing, and what it could still do better. (Note: Cisco is an advisory client of my firm, Moor Insights & Strategy.) Cisco's Strategic Imperatives, Per Robbins And Patel Early on, Robbins made the fundamental point that networking is critical for AI to function, and will be a big factor in enabling AI growth going forward. Beyond that, agentic AI will be adequately secured only by applying security to the network. In this context, Robbins scored a direct hit on Cisco's competitors when he pointed out that 'None of our network friends have security and none of our security friends have networking.' He believes (and I agree) that this puts Cisco in a unique position to help integrate security into the network, which I think is going to be especially important in enterprise IT. AI is growing like wildfire against a backdrop of global turmoil. Robbins said that geopolitical dynamics are a big concern for Cisco, noting that AI competition isn't just between companies, but between nations as well. Whether companies or countries, everyone has FOMO, and everyone feels like they need to move fast. (He said that 85% of enterprises believe they must 'do AI' in the next 18 months.) This reminds me that most of my conversations at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos were spent discussing countries' needs for a disconnected, sovereign AI cloud. The need is there. A new type of infrastructure will be required to realize the potential of generative and especially agentic AI. According to Robbins, we need a similar kind of advancement in infrastructure that happened when the internet became ubiquitous in the 1990s. It's worth pausing here to reflect on how important that period of technology was for turning Cisco into a networking juggernaut. Here in the 2020s, this is going to play out with a hybrid strategy that includes both cloud hyperscalers and private enterprise datacenters. For meeting this need, Robbins told the crowd not to underestimate the impact of Cisco's combined strengths in networking, security and silicon. (In my view, Cisco needs to talk more often and in more detail about the silicon part. I'll come back to that in my recommendations at the end of this article.) After the CEO's keynote was done, Cisco's chief product officer — and newly appointed president — Jeetu Patel took the stage and echoed Robbins with his emphasis on: He later gave much more detail on each of those facets, as I'll cover below. But first he talked about how the ability of AI agents to autonomously execute tasks will compound productivity, especially when combined with advances in robotics, AI and other areas. As he put it, '8 billion [people] will feel like 80 billion.' However, this productivity explosion will be constrained by limits in power, networking and compute. He also foresees a growing divide between companies that are dexterous with AI and those that will struggle. 'We want to help you be in that first category,' Patel said. He's making a very timely prediction. I presented to a group of European CIOs earlier this week in Munich, and one of the slides showed logos of companies that 'died' from not embracing the internet and e-commerce. The same will happen to companies that don't quickly embrace AI. You don't have to be first, but you can't be last. How can Cisco help? Patel brought it back to the compounding effect of Cisco's platform approach, where many different types of complementary technology work 'in harmony.' He referenced the company's silicon (so customers aren't stuck with a single provider) and especially programmable silicon (to adapt to new use cases). He also reiterated a point he had made in the 2024 Cisco Partner Summit — that AI is foundational to Cisco's products, so customers can expect it to be built right in. While I think that's an accurate thing to say, I would also suggest that by now it's not such a point of differentiation. The Need For AI-Ready Infrastructure Patel went into more detail about the massive, even exponential, buildout of datacenters underway right now. He said that Cisco is foundational in building out these new datacenters. For datacenters to support large-scale agentic AI, they need a new architecture that can support the constant high levels of AI model activity that agentic creates. This is unlike generative AI chatbots, where the activity spikes up and down. Patel believes that the company can take advantage of the opportunity based on the experience it has gained from many years of serving hyperscalers/CSPs, neoclouds and enterprise customers. In support of my praise for Cisco's impressive speed lately, Patel touted the 19 major datacenter innovations the company has launched just within the past six months. At Cisco Live, it announced the unified Nexus Dashboard, which creates 'one brain for all of our data center fabrics,' according to Patel. There was also plenty of talk about the company's partnership with AI bellwether Nvidia. Among other aspects of the pairing, Cisco switches are completely integrated into Nvidia architecture, and Nvidia NeMo models can be secured with Cisco AI Defense. As I have said before, I am a recovering product management and product marketing executive, and I always challenge tech companies to describe their product realization process. While Cisco gets criticized for its 'legacy' roots, Patel has very much changed the product culture there. Fewer layers and faster time-to-decision. Most of the new software underlying AI was developed by small teams with six to eight members. This is a new practice — and very much a new Cisco. I will be digging more into the metrics and outcomes as they're available, but I like what I hear so far. Given that this is Cisco we're talking about, that was just the tip of the iceberg for cybersecurity. Patel described security as a prerequisite for enterprise AI because 'If people don't trust the system, they're not going to use it.' There was also an announcement about the Hybrid Mesh Firewall, which enables distributed policy enforcement, adds security to all sorts of devices and can work with existing firewalls (even from third parties). There were other announcements of specific firewalls, and Patel asserted that Cisco is the price-performance leader for firewalls at every level of scale. The company also launched a new secure network architecture called Cisco Live Protect, which is meant to shield your network from an exploit within minutes to give your IT security team time to fix the underlying issue. The contrast between 'within minutes' and the industrywide 45-day average to patch a vulnerability is striking, to say the least. You can read more in this analysis from my colleague Will Townsend, who's an expert on networking and cybersecurity. Our colleague Matt Kimball, who has a long background in datacenters, will also be publishing his analysis soon. Networking And Equipping The Workplace Of Tomorrow This part of the presentation bridged various aspects of networking for enterprises, where Patel said the priorities were operational simplicity, scalability and — once again — security infused into the network. He got some cheers when he announced that Cisco's Catalyst switches are now unified with its Meraki network platform; there's now a single dashboard for managing these along with all of Cisco's next-gen devices. From my perspective, this is a nice example of Cisco's growing emphasis on easing the customer/user experience. In that vein, there was also an impressive demo of the new AgenticOps platform, which includes a multiplayer management console called AI Canvas. Will Townsend wrote much more about this in his article, praising its 'dynamic and real-time view into the inner workings of a customer's infrastructure expanse' to manage the network assurance, observability and remediation supplied by other Cisco tools. The live demo showed a user fetching data on a network outage and making UI widgets in real time to manage it. The engineer using it walked through troubleshooting, then inviting other users to help — with an autogenerated AI summary of what had been done so far. The AI model recognized missing data and looked for it, and then it was easy to apply a patch straight from the dashboard. Even a non-engineer like me could see immediately how helpful this console would be. Patel is not afraid to use hyperbole when it's warranted, so he summarized the impact of AgenticOps by saying, 'The way in which you run your network will never be the same again.' And he promised that much more innovation like this is coming through the pipeline. There was a lot more, including 'one of the largest refreshes of networking devices in Cisco history.' This includes smart switches, secure routers, WiFi 7 gear, campus gateways, industrial IoT . . . if you can network it, Cisco wants to do it smarter. For example, the new smart switches have isolated compute so you can run things like security right on the switch, plus all of the devices act as sensors that provide information about their environment back to the system. Harnessing Data And AI To Fortify Digital Resilience When the conversation turned to digital resilience, Patel and other presenters continued the theme of bringing more data into the picture to keep infrastructure running well. Enterprises routinely expend many hours determining the causes of outages; in Patel's view, the friction of this process is created by not having the right data available. 'One of the reasons we acquired Splunk for the low price of $28 billion,' he said, 'was to take all this data across multiple domains and correlate it.' He added that the core method of digital resilience is to distill data, correlate it, then unleash AI on the problem. There were plenty of specifics in terms of new launches, new Splunk integrations and so on, not to mention using smaller, more efficient bespoke AI models for specific security needs. (Those Cisco folks really are building AI into everything.) But for me there were two big takeaways from this part of the show. First is the idea of reimagining security operations by performing security at machine scale, and consolidating and simplifying security solutions to make that easier. Second is the extension of observability to AI. Some aspects of AI may still be 'black boxes' in terms of what the algorithms are doing, but Cisco wants to give its customers the ability to see everything their AIs are doing in terms of compute usage, network traffic, power draw and so on. If the company is able to pull off everything talked about onstage, I think that can only help with operationalizing AI to yield real business results for enterprises. Messaging All This AI Innovation Cisco Live reminds me a little bit of Google Cloud Next in terms of the sheer number of announcements packed into a couple of days. And it makes sense, given that both Cisco and Google Cloud (a) operate across multiple product areas with many different individual offerings in them, and (b) are investing enormous amounts of bandwidth (and capex) into AI — at speed. There are a couple of risks I see for Cisco. First, yes, the company's leaders told us repeatedly that AI is 'foundational' in their products. But it's one thing to claim this — as do most of the big infrastructure providers and enterprise software vendors. And the demos were great. But it's another thing to accurately engage with the market as a whole and with individual customers to help them understand the many potential payoffs for Cisco's AI innovations, area by area and product by product. I have great faith in Cisco's go-to-market prowess, but there's so much coming down the pike so fast that, to be most successful, the company needs to do the very best job of explaining its wares that it's ever done. Maybe it's my background in semiconductors talking, but I see this especially in how Cisco talks about its in-house silicon. In my view, Cisco doesn't blow this trumpet as loudly or as often as it should. The company announced its Silicon One initiative in 2019, and has been shipping its own chips for years by this point . . . yet there still aren't enough people who know about it. And look at the valuations of AI chip companies today. So I urge the company to talk more about its chips and how they add to the differentiation of Cisco's portfolio. The good news is, the introduction of all this AI functionality from Cisco — and the sea change underway in AI datacenter infrastructure — offers a perfect opportunity to do this. Cisco has some unique advantages in the market, starting with Chuck Robbins' correct and fundamental assertion that no one else in networking can match Cisco in security, and no one else in cybersecurity can match Cisco for networking. I'm also impressed by the waves of smart, relevant, user-friendly products I see at each Cisco event I attend. Now I want to see just how well Cisco can market, message and sell all this goodness into the enterprise.
The Verge
29 minutes ago
- The Verge
Apple's tiny M4 Mac mini has dropped to its lowest price yet
If you've been curious about trying out a Mac for the first time or need a small computer powerful enough to be your home media server, we strongly recommend the latest Mac Mini. Thankfully, the step-up M4 model with 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM is on sale at Amazon and B&H Photo for $689 ($110 off), which marks its lowest price ever. The entry-level model with 256GB of storage is also on sale at Amazon and B&H Photo for $469 ($130 off) — another all-time low. Former Verge staffer Chris Welch called the machine 'a tiny wonder' in his review last year, namely because of its size reduction and power boost over previous generations. Apple managed to pack a lot into a computer that's five inches wide and two inches tall. We reviewed the upgraded 512GB model on sale here, and it performed very well using synthetic testing software, such as Geekbench 6 and Cinebench, as well as a 4K export in Adobe's Premiere Pro. If you work with high-resolution audio, video, or photos, Apple's latest Mini should be able to handle your projects without a problem. One of the Mini's other strengths is its abundance of ports. There are three Thunderbolt 3 ports, an HDMI port, and an ethernet jack on the back, along with a pair of USB-C (USB 3) ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the front. You can use these ports to connect up to three monitors simultaneously, plug it into a TV or projector without an adapter, switch from Wi-Fi to a wired connection on your home network, or attach other common accessories. Alas, the pair of USB-A ports that have been on the Mini for over a decade are gone. One of our only knocks against the M4 Mini was how expensive it was to upgrade its RAM and storage capacity, but this deal helps mitigate that. Also, keep in mind that the Mini is a dedicated desktop computer, which means you will need to supply your own monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Even more great deals If you need a new pair of wireless earbuds for working out, the Powerbeats Pro 2 are still available for around $199.95 ($50 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. Beats' latest earbuds feature a curved shape that wraps around the back of your ears to ensure a proper fit while exercising, IP4X water resistance to prevent damage from sweat, and heart rate sensors that pulse over 100 times per second to provide an accurate reading. The Pro 2 can also last up to 10 hours per charge and run on Apple's H2 chip — the same chip found in Apple's latest AirPods Pro — allowing them to support spatial audio, one-touch pairing with Apple devices, hands-free Siri, and location tracking via Apple's Find My app. Read our review. You can grab a three-pack of Arlo Essential Security Cameras at Amazon for $119.99 ($40 off), which matches the bundle's second-best price to date. The 1080p battery-powered cameras can be installed indoors or outdoors, and you'll receive a notification anytime they sense motion. They also feature a spotlight and siren, and you can view a live feed from the cameras through Arlo's smartphone app or pay for a premium subscription ($7.99 per month) to store videos in the cloud. Marshall's Emberton III speaker is down to $149.99 ($20 off) at Amazon and Best Buy, which matches its lowest price ever. The Bluetooth speaker can play music in true stereo, and automatically adjust its EQ as you raise and lower the volume to avoid blowing out its drivers. It also carries an IP67 rating, which means it's dustproof and shouldn't be damaged when submerged under a meter of water for up to 30 minutes. Marshall says the speaker can last up to 32 hours per charge, and plugging it in for 20 minutes will net you six hours of continuous playback.
