how do YOU take care of your battery?

[weizilla]

I will be getting my first mac computer (blackbook + 4gb of ram) on tuesday and I want to prolong the battery life as much as possible. After doing a lot of searching and reading, there seems to be a few different opinions on how to prolong battery life. Mainly:

1.) Use battery whenever possible and only when charge is really low, charge all the way till full (theory: li-ion batteries work better if electrons are moving all the time + less cycles are better)
2.) Use battery whenever possible and charge daily to prevent charge from reaching really low (theory: li-ion batteries work better if electrons are moving all the time + deep charges hurt battery life)
3.) Use battery as less as possible and keep the laptop plugged in as much as you can (theory: less use of batteries = longer battery lifespan)

Also, it seems calibrating only helps to keep battery stat applications accurate and doesn't actually help with the battery life.

A lot of people have posted screen shots and stats about their batteries with some of them having very impressive numbers like +100 cycles and still +90% health after a year but don't say what they have done to keep their batteries in great condition. Other people have poor battery conditions but don't post anything so it's hard to figure out what to avoid.

So I'm asking you, what is your battery health/cycle/age and how do YOU take care of your battery?

 

[heatmiser]

3.) Use battery as little as possible and keep the laptop plugged in as much as you can (theory: less use of batteries = longer battery lifespan)

This. I'm plugged in whenever possible, but don't stress when I'm not. I rarely own computers for long enough to worry about battery death anyway.

 

[wanda]

Owned my MacBook since august of 2006 and according to istat pro i've got 183 cycles on the battery. it still charges up to 100 percent though sometimes it will only charge to 99 or 98%.

Only thing i've done is to calibrate as the MacBook manual says to, once a month.

Sometimes at home i stay plugged in for days at a stretch...other times i'm not plugged in and just let it run down to the teens before i plug back in.

Also, my battery health says 77%.

How much does a new battery cost anyway?

 

[heatmiser]

How much does a new battery cost anyway?

$130 at Apple, and they have mediocre ratings. You're better off getting a cheaper And higher capacity battery from a 3rd party seller.

 

[CrzyCanuck72]

if it's convenient for me to have it plugged in, I'll plug it in. If it's convenient to use it on battery, I'll use it on battery. I have more important things to do than worry about whether I'm losing a day or two off the battery's lifespan.

 

[Star Destroyer]

I do the last one, i try my best to keep it plugged in as much as i can to limit the use of the battery.

In regards to the cycle count, the way the macbook works with that is for example - One cycle is not necessarily going from 100 to 0 and back, it will add all your little fractions up and when they total 100 it says its a cycle. So if you use it and drain 30% one day then charge it up and then drain 10 the next, and charge it, and then drain 60% the following day and charge that back to 100% even though you have never gone down to no life remaining it will count as 1 cycle because you have used fractions of a cycle... get it ?

So losing 10% 10 days in a row is a cycle, and you can't prevent the cycle count, y ou can only slow it.... So i try to slow it as much as i can, whilst calibrating monthly...

So far its been good, but really, if my battery sucks after a year i will just buy a new one and then not worry because the point of owning a laptop is for portability, i wanna take it with me and not need to bitch about a plug in class... So i take and i can use, and i calibrate and lead a care-free mac lifestyle because i know i can get a new battery when i need it, or want it.

Cheers! (sorry for the length, but i had at one time thought the same as you as trying to protect my battery from dying, but now, just get a new one...)

 

[anirban]

if it's convenient for me to have it plugged in, I'll plug it in. If it's convenient to use it on battery, I'll use it on battery. I have more important things to do than worry about whether I'm losing a day or two off the battery's lifespan.

This is what I also follow.

But in the event that I am plugged into AC for more than a week at once, I would let the battery drain.

 

[EricNau]

It might be worth reading Apple's site on battery care: http://www.apple.com/batteries/ (notice the links on the right of the page).

 

[MacDann]

So far its been good, but really, if my battery sucks after a year i will just buy a new one and then not worry because the point of owning a laptop is for portability, i wanna take it with me and not need to bitch about a plug in class... So i take and i can use, and i calibrate and lead a care-free mac lifestyle because i know i can get a new battery when i need it, or want it.

Cheers! (sorry for the length, but i had at one time thought the same as you as trying to protect my battery from dying, but now, just get a new one...)

What they said. I try to keep my MBP plugged in as much as possible, but if I have to go mobile I don't worry about it. I have two batteries for it, one with 16 cycles and the other with 2. I just rotate them out once a month so they're used evenly, but as mentioned above, what's the point of having a notebook if you can't unplug it?

OWC has a good line of high capacity batteries that are cheaper and better than Apple's. It only takes one look at the ratings for Apple's batteries in the Apple Store to see that it's not the place to buy one.

MacDann

 

[teleromeo]

I don't really care.
My powerbook is almost three years old and the battery life is really terrible. I don't think i get half an hour of unplugged computing whith a 'full' charged battery. on the other hand, I invested in a second charger so I have one at work and at home. When I foresee to need power on the road I take one of these with me in my backpack.

 

[priller]

if it's convenient for me to have it plugged in, I'll plug it in. If it's convenient to use it on battery, I'll use it on battery. I have more important things to do than worry about whether I'm losing a day or two off the battery's lifespan.

Same here, if the battery is dead in a year I'll just buy another one.

 

[scubasteve3715]

I have 343 cycles on my mbp 17" and iStat Pro says i still have 97% health. Coconut battery thinks i have 100%. I try my best to charge my laptop to 100% and bring it back down to around 0% just before the screen shuts off and it goes to sleep. Seems to be working well.

 

[icec0ld]

i've drained my laptop battery completely once every few months. have had some good success doing it that way in years past.