Helping a new battery last

[OldManJimbo]

Just purchased a replacement battery for my 12" G4 1ghz.

Looking for a quick opinion from the forum.

To keep my battery in tip-top condition, should I:

1) Only plug in the charger when the battery has been drained to a low level.
2) Plug in the charger and "top off" the battery even if it's not run down?

Also -

Is there any harm in leaving the battery plugged into the charger for long periods of time.

PLEASE don't direct me to Apple's knowledge base. I've read everything I can find on this and I'm just looking for your personal experiences, which always seem to be more relevant than the experts.

 

[hikingnclimbing]

From what I've experienced with laptops in general, it's best to run the battery to the reserve and then plug it in and charge it up to full capacity. When I worked in a tech support office, that's what we recommended people to do. And, if it is a new battery, don't forget to follow Apple's instructions for conditioning it (running it all the way out to the point that it goes into standby or shuts off and then charge it back up to full). I can't say from personal experience if any of this really does help since I only just got my second laptop. But, with my first laptop, I used the "top it off" method and wound up killing my battery for good in a year or two. Not sure if the two were related, but I had a couple people tell me that they were.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[jtown]

Don't worry about it. Plug it in when you have an outlet. Unplug it when you need to move. Leave it plugged in for as long as you like. Doesn't matter if you run it all the way down. Doesn't matter if you don't charge it all the way every time you plug it in. As for battery life, 2 years is about what you can expect from this type of battery before the loss of capacity becomes noticable. There's no way to avoid it.

 

[dambro1978]

Don't unplug it in sleep mode to carry the laptop at home or from home to the working place. it is better to shut it down. When I bought my ibook I was showing to all my friends saying " look I don't switch it off for months!!"

Result: after 1 year of this stupid use my battery lasted 30 minutes.

Things to do:

-Plug in and out whenever you want when it is shut off.
-Plug it out only when you really need it (new apple batteries have a kind of protection system so you don't really need to drain out the battery before re-charging it)

Shut it off to take the laptop from one place to another, don't be lazy.
Your battery will live for a couple of months more...........

 

[OldManJimbo]

OK - so what I'm hearing is that the battery is only going to last about two years and there's not much I can do to prevent it going "soft." I'll just need to budget for a new one every 18 months.

I'm also sensing that there's no need to let it run nall the way down before recharging, and that "topping off" is OK. Hmm, I'm having trouble with that as it seems to go counter to what I've been told about such things.

I've also heard that letting the PowerBook sleep for long periods of time is not such a good thing.

Thanks for all your input - I'm looking for more if any has an idea.

 

[EHUnlucky7x9@ao]

drain it first is the best. I think overcharging it applies to all batteries b/c that's what they say about rechargable AA's, AAA's, C's and D's.