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Macbook as desktop help

Mercury7

Mercury7

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 31, 2007
749
569
I purchased a new blackbook last month and almost immediately afterwards I came upon a great deal on a 12" powerbook that was mint and so now it is my portable machine that I use to take on the road.

So what happened next is I moved my mac mini back to the bedroom to hook up to a hdtv monitor and I hooked up my blackbook to an external monitor and am running it in clamshell mode as my main computer.

My main question is if I should take the battery out and save it for when I start using it as a laptop again or should I leave it in and just let it keep trickle charging as needed?

Any other pros or cons doing this? I really like it as a desktop ....it is quiet and fast, and it works great with my diamond pro 2070b crt monitor.
 
Hi,

definitely get the battery out if you use it as desktop replacement. Your Macbook will charge the battery just a bit as soon as it drops below 95% (I believe) to keep the charge at 100%.

So you would waste charging cycles if you keep it connected.


Hope this is helpful.
/Rupert
 
Thanks, But will the battery be ruined by just sitting in a drawer also? That was what my concern was....anyway I appreciate it....and btw to anyone considering a mac mini......this blackbook although I know cost more, when you compare the specs it really starts seeming like the way to go...it was 13 something with the rebate and came with 2.4ghz duo core, 2 gigs of memory and a 250 hd all standard. I guess we will just have to see what they do with the mini after the update...whenever it comes.
 
DO NOT take the battery out.

Apple made all their portables reduce their CPU speeds by half when a battery is not present.
If you have a 2.0ghz for example, it will be cut down to 1.0ghz.

There's some reason behind why apple did this, but i can't quite remember why.
 
airjuggernaut said:
DO NOT take the battery out.

Apple made all their portables reduce their CPU speeds by half when a battery is not present.
If you have a 2.0ghz for example, it will be cut down to 1.0ghz.

There's some reason behind why apple did this, but i can't quite remember why.
Click to expand...

This seems really odd, do you have any more information on that?
 
Yes - definitely true - in fact it reduces the speed to 1 GHz whatever the processor speed.

Apparently because the charger cannot provide enough amps when required.

Have been using a MacBook in clamshell mode for about a year now - works perfectly with the battery connected. PowerBooks are different and Apple used to advise removing them...

Current advise is to use the battery once a month as a laptop and recharge.. but as soon as you run on battery power you can't use an external monitor.....
 
Take it out

If you take the battery make sure that the battery is fully empty. A quick way to do that is to open everything and play music and then just let it go until it is dead.
 
On my 2.2GHz MacBook Pro (recently sold so that I could upgrade to my Mac Pro), that I used to use in clamshell mode hooked up to a 24" Dell LCD I left the battery in and no harm was done. Battery life did not seem to degrade at all. :)
 
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