My 2012 MacBook Air on a full charge only lasts 2-2.5 hours during an intense coding session. Am I the only one?
The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
11–20 of 148 posts
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#12>letting the battery cycle* Wait- I thought that was for NiCd batteries and Li-ion batteries where suppose to always be topped off? Furthermore going below 15-20% charge hurts their max charge level? *By cycle he means running it down and charging it up?
Li-ion batteries do have a memory effect also, but it is apparently quite negligible.
Li-ion batteries should NOT be topped up for extended periods; this will shorten their lifespan considerably.
When storing a li-ion battery for an extended period, it is best if the battery has around 30% charge.
However I am not a real expert on this kind of stuff, please don't take this as gospel, if there is a qualified battery expert who can chime in here, please do :)
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#13[deleted]
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#14>letting the battery cycle* Wait- I thought that was for NiCd batteries and Li-ion batteries where suppose to always be topped off? Furthermore going below 15-20% charge hurts their max charge level? *By cycle he means running it down and charging it up?
The official advice is:
"Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time. An ideal use would be a commuter who uses her notebook on the train, then plugs it in at the office to charge. This keeps the battery juices flowing. If on the other hand, you use a desktop computer at work, and save a notebook for infrequent travel, Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month.
[...]
If you don't plan on using your notebook for more than six months, Apple recommends that you store the battery with a 50% charge." [1]
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#15My 2012 MacBook Air on a full charge only lasts 2-2.5 hours during an intense coding session. Am I the only one?
That probably depends wildly on what an "intense coding session" entails. Do you have an IDE that is keeping your CPU pegged by constantly rebuilding everything every time you enter a character? Or do you code in Vim and build every few minutes at the absolute most?
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#16If your cycle count is 223 and you are nearing 80%, then your battery is defective, plain and simple. Apple will replace it. It's happened to me a couple times and Apple took care of it with no hassles.
I had my first macbook's battery replaced. I took it into the apple store for an unrelated problem, the tech noted the awful battery life and asked me how old the laptop was, said, "that's not right...," and grabbed another battery. Nice and easy.
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#17anyone know how to do something similar on a windows laptop?
I'd guess:
- write a little code to drive this API: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7785096/read-laptop-batte...
- and either use a task scheduler to run your code every minute, or startup a long-lived process which just does this and sleeps
- output in whatever format you like. CSV is obviously good, but given richer APIs on windows you could dump it straight into an excel sheet I guess.
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#18Link is dead for me, mirror?
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#19Wow, this is an excellent article! Nice visualization of the battery life. I am quite nervous about the battery sealed inside my own new Macbook. Is it better to attempt to use the battery as much as possible in order to get a new one before the 3 year Applecare Warranty expires? Or to maniacally keep the machine plugged in if at all possible? Or simply not to care? The price of a replacement will be high, and I wond…
>Wow, this is an excellent article! Nice visualization of the battery life.
Thanks!
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#20Is this guy really a developer? I can't imagine using a single 15" monitor to accomplish anything at a productive pace.