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mdickson

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 8, 2006
175
16
So, I bought my Macbook (white, 2.0) solely because I was in the market for a new computer and I liked what I saw in the MacBook. Where my question comes in is using the MB for school (I'm in college). If I take it to school and take notes on it each day will this have a huge impact on the lifetime of the battery? So far I've almost been using my MB as a desktop. :confused:
 
mdickson said:
So, I bought my Macbook (white, 2.0) solely because I was in the market for a new computer and I liked what I saw in the MacBook. Where my question comes in is using the MB for school (I'm in college). If I take it to school and take notes on it each day will this have a huge impact on the lifetime of the battery? So far I've almost been using my MB as a desktop. :confused:

that's what i plan to do with my macbook....just use it....that's what you bought it for
 
mdickson said:
So, I bought my Macbook (white, 2.0) solely because I was in the market for a new computer and I liked what I saw in the MacBook. Where my question comes in is using the MB for school (I'm in college). If I take it to school and take notes on it each day will this have a huge impact on the lifetime of the battery? So far I've almost been using my MB as a desktop. :confused:

Yea constantly using up your battery will drain it's lifetime a lot faster. But no big deal, just get new battery when you need it!
 
No, constantly using it will not make your battery life time shorter as in how soon it will die (not the charge). What does or so the myth is the fact that if you charge it all the time before it gets damn near empty kills the battery life time.

Having said that, I got my Vaio laptop last year for college and i use it all the time and if im home, I charge it. I dont wait for it to drop below 50% or 25% battery lifetime and its been the same, im not getting 3hrs of battery life time instead of the 4 I was suppose to get so I say, use the crap out of it, take it to class and charge it whenever you want to.
 
I dont understand why you think this is an issue. Sure it would suck if your battery died, but if end up using it having it plugged in all the time (and at college it is damn near impossible, atleast for me) you might as well have gotten an iMac or something else.
 
Don't worry about it

I've been using my Powerbook for about a year and I cannot imagine anyone being able to be more random about power/battery use than I have been. I am on the road a lot and whenever I am near a plug-in I grab some volts so my computer will sometimes be plugged in for 5 minutes and sometimes 2 hours, I go for a handfull of cycles where I'm at or near full charge and then a bunch where I'm dragging bottom. Even when I'm at home I'll unplug and work on the couch for 20 minutes or until I get the low battery warning depending on the day. I have accumulated 439 battery cycles and I still get 3:30 hours from the battery. Aside from doing the initial battery calibration I have put absolutely no thought into charge/discharge cycles.

Here is a image from my profiler just after disconnecting from AC:
 

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