Although battery health and maintenance is interesting I have never bothered to nurse or baby my batteries on my equipment. If the battery gets to be too short lived its time to replace it.
The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
141–148 of 148 posts
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
At least some Thinkpads used to let you limit the charge on the battery. 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.
I don't understand. So with this setting people are artificially limiting their battery capacity to 40%, in order to preserve capacity they're not going to use? Meanwhile you'd have to ride a battery pretty hard to grind it down to 40% health, it'd take many years probably.
I'm not sure what the average lifetime of a laptop is, but I'd be surprised if it's more than 8 years. What's the upside if the battery is well preserved at the time when the device is being replaced? Let's say with normal usage the battery will perform at an average of 80% over its lifetime, that's still better than 40% - for the same money.
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#143anyone know how to do something similar on a windows laptop?
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/check-ou...
This one will also output in XML. The APIs should be there in Windows 7, too.
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#144I have exactly the same laptop, purchased from an Apple store ~14 months ago.
I have more than double his cycle count at 569. My battery is at 85% capacity.
I'd say your battery is defective, or you were doing something to it that caused it to degrade more rapidly.
It's also a little unnerving that the 2009 MBP has an apparently far superior battery, despite Apple's explicit claims to the contrary.
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#145Is this guy really a developer? I can't imagine using a single 15" monitor to accomplish anything at a productive pace.
I'm not a developer, I'm a scientist (astronomer as a matter of fact).
I live on a single 13" screen, the MacBook Air I'm typing on right now. I used to have lots of screen space, driving dual monitors on my linux box at work. I replaced them with a fern.
For some people, less is more =)
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
The really dumb thing is that, as far as I can tell, a battery's controller generally counts a "cycle" as "started discharging, started charging", regardless of time in between. At least, that's how it was with my MacBook a few years ago. Unplug, plug in, cycle count increases. The crappy thing about that is warranties. Apple, for example (at least last I checked; I don't use a Mac anymore) , would replace a battery…
If you read the documentation a cycle is considered a full charge and discharge of the battery. It doesn't have to be discharged or charged fully, but when you've charged the full capacity of the battery and discharged that same amount, that's a cycle.
Sure, but that was not reflected in System Profiler when I actually tested it. Unfortunately I can't test it again now, as my old MacBook's battery will hold up for approximately 14ms before the computer shuts off.
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I don’t know if this applies to other notebooks but at least Apple used to recommend that you do not remove the battery [0]. There’s a little more discussion on Super User [1] but there seems to be no definite answer.
[0]: http://web.archive.org/web/20130615084258/http://support.app... [1]: http://superuser.com/a/12842
Re: The De-evolution of My Laptop Battery
#148So, this inspired me to collect similar data on my laptop. I'm collecting a few more data points, internal battery temp, individual cell voltage, etc. I'm estimating 30-60 MB/year at 1 minute intervals. My script is available on GitHub here https://github.com/mikegrb/Battery-Logger