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SilentLoner

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 29, 2007
1,065
6
I just checked on my istat widget and I see my battery has been through 6 cycles, what does this mean?
 

motulist

macrumors 601
Dec 2, 2003
4,234
611
It's a measure of battery health. The more cycles a battery has been through, the less capacity it has to store power in future recharges. So the more cycles a battery has been through, the less time it will be able to keep your laptop running when starting from a full charge.

A cycle is when a battery has fully discharged it's maximum power storage capacity. e.g. if a battery is fully charged and then run down to zero, that equals 1 cycle. If a fully charged battery is run down to 50%, recharged to full, and then run down to 50% a second time, that also equals 1 cycle.
 
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