Comments on: The Hard Truth About Your Laptop Battery

By: Brandon

Brandon — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:08:25 +0000

My opinion also comes in response from reading the reviews on apples battery discussions and noticing that the people that have the best performing/longest lasting batteries were not the people who meticulously analyzed how long to plug it in for and how often to calibrate it, but it was the students and travelers who used their batteries and plugged in their cables only on the occasion that an outlet was nearby (which is not that often when traveling). Thus the author’s comment about plugging in your laptop when your on the couch, I disagree with. I think it’s better to not plug it in until you know you’ll need it. And by the way, these are recent discussions, not old ones from people using older battery technology

By: Brandon

Brandon — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 03:58:11 +0000

Of course you should’ve gotten a MacBook, one for better battery, and two because pc’s are crap. I’m still using my 6yr old 12″ PowerBook with Leopard while the “nicer” windows laptop I spent $3500 on back in the day can’t even run the old xp operating system. Second comment I’d like to make is that I’ve actually learned through sad experience that a main push of this article is incorrect. The author says to not use the battery as much as possible…this has totally ruined my wife’s battery since I told her to do that after reading this article, whereas my battery which I just use until the juice is low, then charge and don’t leave plugged in for long, is still running at full performance. Moral of story: batteries are meant to be used, so use them. I’m not saying to never use the power cord, but don’t let it stay in for so long for fear of using the battery, it’s a ridiculous fear.

By: Ray

Ray — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 03:03:52 +0000

Guys very helpful indeed.
I just bought a new Toshiba Satellite for £550, im now wondering whether it would have been better to get a macbook, what do you guys think? the battery on the Tosh lasts 2hr 30min to 3hours and its brand new!

By: Steve Ford

Steve Ford — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:29:37 +0000

Using a MacBook now and it is fine, I’m not to worried about the battery life on this thing tbh. I think Mac is far superior because it doesn’t use .DLLs

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:19:25 +0000

vj:

Just from my experience, I wouldn’t do that. If you’re keeping it plugged in, leave the battery out of this. The battery will last a lot longer that way. I left my battery at full charge but removed from the computer. Will usually leave it that way for 2 months, before I’ll remember I need to ‘use’ it occasionally. The charge usually drops to around 80-90% if left unused for a couple months, but if you charge it back to 100%, you can still get 4 hrs worth of juice. Why charge and discharge the battery, if you don’t have to?

By: Vj

Vj — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:22:31 +0000

Hi,
Your xplanation was very clear and u to the marks thanks a lot for your tips. My questions is ” If the laptop stays plugged in always, will it affect the battery in any ways like overheating and so forth”..?. Can you just xplain this issue.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:27:37 +0000

Those are great numbers for cycles and capacity loss. There are likely a few things at work giving you such amazing capacity longevity, and great cycle life. My guess is it all comes down to our pesky friend ”’temperature”’. The 35% degradation I stated is what “some” research puts lithium ion at when stored at 100% charge, at 104 degrees Fahrenheit. I personally think it’s a bit high… so does your experience. The number is probably less for more recently manufactured batteries.. ( they are getting better. ) However, temperature is still king here. Most people that “work” on their laptops don’t really _WORK_ their laptops. Sure sometimes firefox gobbles up 100% of the CPU for a minute or two while watching a youtube video… but how many people run their laptop CPU and memory full out for hours on end each day? ( *my hand goes up in the back* ) In addition, I have a macbook pro.. which does a great job of conducting all that heat evenly over the battery, warming it nicely. Now… to avoid the problems I run my fans at 6000 RPM solid… but everything still heats up. This is my guess as to why my macbook pro batteries last about a year before beginning to lose capacity faster then my decreasing attention span with each passing season of “Lost”.

The plastic macbooks seem pretty good at keeping the heat away from the battery. That should help extend the life tremendously. I don’t know what tricks have been employed to protect the latest generation of batteries sitting inside those uni-body aluminium cases…….

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:03:57 +0000

>>”That way, you’d get the most out of your cycle: charge the battery to 100%, use 100% of the battery, and start over. With the newer lithium ion batteries, this is no longer true.”

I have to say that I disagree with this, although it seems logical and believable, my own exprience has denoted otherwise. Anthony started to explain, but then went on to say that they decrease in capacity 35% per year, even when used properly. With this I disagree as well.

I have a white macbook that I purchased in december of 2007. I work on my laptop, and spend probably 10-12 hours on it a day. I rarely shut it off, but just put it in sleep mode. I try to keep it plugged in when I can, but I always fully charge it if I am going to charge it ( no partial charges) then if I unplug it, I will run it to 0-6% before plugging it in. I know this is “old-school” nickel battery behavior, but in practicing this, My macbook’s battery currently:
- stil lasts a good 4-5 hours (6 if no audio or video is playing and the screen is at its dimmest)
- is at 96% capacity
- has 632 cycles on it

So although lithium claims to not have any charge memory, or whatever the “technology” and science behind it say, my experience has prooved otherwise to me.

p.s. my wife has the same computer as me, that she purchased 6 months before me, it has a capacity of 74% and 550 or so cycles. She does not share the same charging habits as I do, but they have still both lasted longer than claimed in this article and claimed by apple.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:18:42 +0000

To Apple’s credit. Their recent “built in” batteries are “replaceable”. Just not “user replaceable”. If you kill the battery apple will replace it for about as much as other modern laptop batteries cost. Likely what they found is most people never remove battery for the life of the laptop ( even if it is good for it ) So they can use this typical behaviour to save space on casing, and add more battery giving more run time. You can’t please everybody all the time, but they do have the longest running 15 and 17 inch modern laptops.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:58:46 +0000

Once again, great post. I have been considering a Macbook Pro but the idea of a built-in battery seemed completely wrong for me. I don’t have much to contribute in terms of technical or chemistry, but I wanted to add something after reading Anthony’s post. My first laptop battery was a disaster, because I kept the laptop plugged into the AC supply with the battery 24-7. It retained pretty much 30 minutes of power when 100% charged after about 2 years.

When I got my second laptop, I made sure the battery was removed if I planned on leaving it on AC for at least the next couple days. In a way, I used the battery only once every 2 months, and I have to say, its been 5 years since I bought that laptop and when I last tried the battery on a full charge, it lasted me 4 hours. So I do think there is a way you can treat your battery well.