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battery useage advice

S

slattery69

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 16, 2009
194
11
Paid Shill
ive got a late 2011 macbook pro 13. ive read the battery FAQ and its been helpful.

this is what i currently do and just want to check its correct. i tend to leave the laptop plugged in when iam at work or asleep( the macbook is not shut down just in sleep mode). at least once during the day i take the battery of charge and use it till the power drops about 5-10% then usually revert back to running on power.

is this good practise if not what advice would you give, thanks in advance
 
slattery69 said:
ive got a late 2011 macbook pro 13. ive read the battery FAQ and its been helpful.

this is what i currently do and just want to check its correct. i tend to leave the laptop plugged in when iam at work or asleep( the macbook is not shut down just in sleep mode). at least once during the day i take the battery of charge and use it till the power drops about 5-10% then usually revert back to running on power.

is this good practise if not what advice would you give, thanks in advance
Click to expand...

You're simply putting unnecessary cycles on your battery by doing that.

So long as you actually use the battery about once a week to keep its juices flowing, you're using it right. You don't need to do that every day. Use it on a couch for an afternoon, watch a movie in bed late at night, whatever floats your boat.
 
Lithion-Ion batteries need to be kept active. But they also benefit from shallow discharge/recharge cycles, rather than taking them right down to empty and filling back up to full.

As such, your practice of switching to battery for a little while each day is a good one, though a bit more variation than just such shallow discharges might be good.

I use mine plugged in most of the time, but run down to around 60% every few days. This usually happens naturally - sometimes I'm just not near my charger, and the MBP gets such fantastic battery life that it's easy to spend a few hours on battery without running it very low.

It's not just cycles that exhaust Li-Ion batteries. Over time they deteriorate anyway, from the day they were manufactured. I've seen way too many examples on here of people with batteries a couple of years old that have done tens of cycles, which they think is a good thing, and are now in Service Battery mode because they simply haven't been kept active enough.

These batteries are designed to be used.
 
A Lithium-Ion battery "likes" to be worked out in much the same way you or I would like to work out.

Most days, we go for workouts that don't totally kill us, but make us feel good afterwards. Batteries like to be used like this as well. However, the occasional deep cycle if most definitely fine.

Overall, just use your computer the way that you want to. As long as you unplug it and use the battery every few days, you'll be fine. If not, it will get "lazy" much like a person does if they don't work out for a few weeks :p
 
Thanks for the replies first MacBook and first laptop with a none user replaceable battery so just want to make sure I look after it as best I can. Thanks for the advice
 
I plug in whenever I can and unplug when I need to move my computer, sometimes I plug in and disconnect several times in a short time.

I used to check my health, but I've stopped mostly and it would appear my battery health stays relatively the same regardless to how I use my computer.
 
alphaod said:
I plug in whenever I can and unplug when I need to move my computer, sometimes I plug in and disconnect several times in a short time.

I used to check my health, but I've stopped mostly and it would appear my battery health stays relatively the same regardless to how I use my computer.
Click to expand...

same for me
 
slattery69 said:
is this good practise if not what advice would you give, thanks in advance
Click to expand...
Run on battery when you need to and plug it in when you can. It makes no difference at what percentage you plug or unplug. Just make sure you don't run on AC power all the time. This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:
 
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