Comments on: What’s the Ideal Strategy to Maximize Notebook Battery Lifespan?

By: jh

jh — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:53:32 +0000

taking good care of my battery to gain a couple of months of use is not cost effective at all.

in one laptop lifetime (about 3 years) i go through about 2 batteries with about 400-500 charge cycles each.

not extending the battery life by about 10% over the course of 15 months costs me $25 tops, that is $50 for three years.
that adds less than 3% to the total cost of ownership of, let’s say, $1500 for a macbook.

that is a price i gladly pay for not bothering with any battery-hand-holding.

By: paul

paul — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:08:20 +0000

i confirm that also occurs with 15″ MacBook Pro 2,4 Santa Rosa, BillyGuy. Removing the battery slows down performance.

And I must add my experience with a 62% Health battery after only 70 cycles!!! Got replaced and the second one is starting to fail… :-(

By: BillyGuy

BillyGuy — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:10:14 +0000

Don’t forget that Intel said that removing the battery makes the CPU go slower. On the first MacBook Pro, when you removed the battery and left the AC, the CPU was running at 1Ghz !
So yes it is a good idea to remove it when plugged but only if you don’t need full power.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:49:49 +0000

Devin: Also, with third parties still making high-capacity batteries for iBooks and PowerBooks, it’s not like you won’t ever be able to replace one. And the new battery is likely to last longer than the old one did initially.

By: Devin Reams

Devin Reams — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:40:50 +0000

All this talk is kinda fluffy, especially considering how often we Mac users are upgrading. I don’t see my AC usage killing my MacBook Air battery before I move onto new technology.

By: Charles Moore

Charles Moore — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:26:18 +0000

Hi Sam;

Arrgh! 2002 it definitely is.

1992 was the year I bought my forst Mac – a compact Plus.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Hi Rob;

Good question. Not one I’m equipped to answer with any technical authority, but I do recollect that during Apple battery recalls they have recommended removing the battery and running on AC power, and I don;t think they would make such a recommendation if there was risk of damaging anything.

I found a couple of forums dicussinf this topic, but nothing definitive.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=71689
http://harry.sufehmi.com/archives/2007-03-03-1425/

Charles

By: Rick

Rick — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:23:26 +0000

Interesting how things have changed in two years. These days it really seems to be a crap shoot on battery life. Kind of like the US Economy, it seems like the technology is too variable for an accurate idea of how long to expect batteries to last.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:14:02 +0000

I’ve heard stories that the power supply in a notebook actually expects the battery to be in the unit when it is in use. Removing the battery may be a good idea to keep it in optimal shape, but it may be bad for the notebook itself because the line power is less buffered than it should be.

I would love to hear the ideas of an expert on that subject.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:31:42 +0000

“The OEM batteries are still in my G3 iBook (December, 1992),” Did you mean to say 2002? 16 yeas is an awfully long time for a battery. And the G3 came out in 1997, right?