131–140 of 148 posts
> The rate of degradation of lithium-ion batteries is strongly temperature-dependent; they degrade much faster if stored or used at higher temperatures.
That might be related. MacBook Airs get really hot even if you aren't doing anything too taxing.
If 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.
If 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.
Really? I got a 2006 MacBook Pro in Dec 2006, and each year I had to buy a new battery from Apple as it generally got down to 30-40% capacity. First time it happened (and was still under warrantee), I took it into Apple, and they said it was normal, and they only replaced batteries if it was defective. I went through 5 batteries until I got a 2011 MacBook Pro.
Back then the batteries were only rated for 300 cycles so if you were above that they wouldn’t exchange it. Apple did exchange the battery in my MacBook Pro (2007) three or four times or so (I had Apple Care, so warranty for three years) because I had similar problems you had – but each time my battery was below 300 cycles. As far as I know that is official Apple policy. I never had to convince or smooth talk anyone, they just exchanged in, no questions asked. And I didn’t exchange the battery always in the same place, once or twice over telephone, at an Apple Authorised Service Provider, at an Apple Store.
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Apple batteries cost no more than competitors' batteries, and that includes getting them exchanged. Sure, it's annoying you can't do it yourself, but that's about the extent of the downside. Of course you cannot get third party batteries … but surely no one would get those for laptops amyway. (Well, some batteries are not yet glued in, so those can easily be replaced. But i don't think getting third party batteries i…
I used a third party battery with double the previous capacity for an Asus laptop without any issues
Lithium batteries are fucking dangerous. I don’t think it’s very wise to use third party ones, at least not the big ones.
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Yes to the former, but (hopefully a real battery expert can chime in here) my understanding is that lithium-ion batteries cannot be float/trickle charged safely. Their internal resistance is too non-linear and it's too easy even with a "full" battery to provide a voltage that will sink dangerous amounts of current and overheat. All lithium ion technologies I'm aware of require active current and temperature monitorin…
Probably 90% of the time I'm using my laptops is when I'm actually sitting at my desk and they are always plugged in at that time. I recently read where someone else had stated that it was good to remove the battery (if you can) if using the laptop with external power. Any idea if this this accurate or will prolong battery life? I've got an (almost) brand new Thinkpad with a large, expensive battery that I'd like to…
Capping the charge at something like 60% is a great way to preserve the battery if you're not going to need all that battery life.
Storing at 40%-60% elongates the life compared to 100% or 0%.
All of this is 2nd hand, and I have no particular expertise to validate this comment.
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I wonder if using your laptop plugged in at your desk 90% of the time, but carrying it around to use in meetings the other 10%, is as good as their "ideal use."
Maximizing your battery's life is not remotely close to a science, but as a rule of thumb, discharge to 50% every couple of days then recharge.
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To confirm or disprove your idea, you could look at the output of the battery charger rather than the input to it. In general, AC-DC converters are pretty insensitive to the harmonic content of the AC input because their role is to remove any harmonic content they do find. They do this with huge low-pass filters with corner frequencies well under 1Hz, whether the charger is either linear (unlikely) or switching (much…
Interesting, but does using a DC to AC inverter change anything? I've noticed that cell phone batteries also failed prematurely when I had the modified sine inverter. Do you mean that if my charger was operating with less efficiency due to modified sine wave input then my batteries were not likely to be affected?
If 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 can attest to that: my Macbook white bought on October 2009 (that's 46 months folks) which I used every single day to this very day has 261 load cycles and 91% of original capacity.
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They're just held in with torx screws, from what I could see of my old 'unibody' mac when I took it apart. Current gen may be different though.
Indeed, they're not meant to be user-serviceable, but they are very easily serviceable at the store.