Question Regarding Battery Life

[Mojodan]

Hello. I have a question with regards to behavior that can either extend or diminish the overall life of a laptop battery. My friend recently purchased a new laptop (sony vaio) at a local Microcenter. The salesman was very insistent upon lecturing my friend as to the proper way to take care of a laptop. One of things he mentioned was to never move the computer while it is on, and to always close the lid before engaging in any sort of extensive moving (due to hard drive? processor? any verification on this?). Another thing that was very insistent upon was to always let the battery deplete from full to near empty on every charging cycle, and only charge the computer when replenishing it back to full. He claimed that this would dramatically increase the overall life of the battery.

My specific question relates to the MBP and this battery concept.
1) In general, can anyone verify this / does anyone believe that it would make a significant difference?
2) I remember watching one of those apple videos on the apple website where they were talking about their new battery technology, and they mentioned something about a chip that regulates the power distribution to the battery cells, thus preventing over charging, or something along those lines. Would this negate the advice given by the friendy salesman at Microcenter?

Thanks, opinions are appreciated.

 

[Wehrwolf]

Just use common sense when moving a powered on laptop. You can safely move a open & running notebook if you're careful and don't subject it to sudden impacts or movement. The main concern is the hard drive. Even with Apple's free fall sensor, it's just common sense to be careful with an expensive machine like a MBP.

From what I understand, subjecting a lithium battery to a full discharge/recharge each cycle (like the salesman described) will actually shorten the battery's life. They instead prefer frequent partial discharge/recharge cycles. Read and follow Apple's battery maintenance guidelines, and you should be fine. Don't stress out over how you're using the battery; you should be in control of how you use the notebook, not the other way around.

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

 

[harmonica01]

Hello. I have a question with regards to behavior that can either extend or diminish the overall life of a laptop battery. My friend recently purchased a new laptop (sony vaio) at a local Microcenter. The salesman was very insistent upon lecturing my friend as to the proper way to take care of a laptop. One of things he mentioned was to never move the computer while it is on, and to always close the lid before engaging in any sort of extensive moving (due to hard drive? processor? any verification on this?). Another thing that was very insistent upon was to always let the battery deplete from full to near empty on every charging cycle, and only charge the computer when replenishing it back to full. He claimed that this would dramatically increase the overall life of the battery.

My specific question relates to the MBP and this battery concept.
1) In general, can anyone verify this / does anyone believe that it would make a significant difference?
2) I remember watching one of those apple videos on the apple website where they were talking about their new battery technology, and they mentioned something about a chip that regulates the power distribution to the battery cells, thus preventing over charging, or something along those lines. Would this negate the advice given by the friendy salesman at Microcenter?

Thanks, opinions are appreciated.

Yes and no

The salesman is correct in giving you the way to calibrate the battery, but no this does not have to be done on every cycle, maybe once a month when you find it convenient to deplete a battery to 1% then shut it down and leave it off a few hours while charging.

Modern HD's have shock sensors so even dropping one has a great chance of surviving and still working normally. For best results on your macbook yes close the lid and wait until light dims and starts blinking because it is backing up your ram to your HD incase of sudden failure from power or what have you. But not necessary to close lid and that has nothing to do with battery if I understand your question