battery fading inevitable?

[tinroots]

Is it simply a fact of a laptop life that the battery will slowly loose it's length of holding a charge? are there tips/tricks for helping to prevent this? In general, I charge my ibook until it's full and take the charger out, until it's charged again. That being the opposite of what I did for my ti Powerbook which eventually lost any ability to hold a charge. Is this incorrect? thanks.

[lurk]

It is inevitable, they only have so many cycles in them. The best suggestion with modern batteries is to just don't use them unless you need them. That is don't cycle them gratuitously, you don't need to drain them down every so after to prevent memory effects like in the old days.

You can look at the battery stats in your hardware profiler if you want to see about how your battery is doing. Mine says

Battery Information:

Battery Installed: Yes
First low level warning: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3803
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 3754
Amperage (mA): 0
Voltage (mV): 12484
Cycle Count: 450

That last line also shows my philosophy in this mater after a year and a half of use, use it however you want to and is convenient. Since you cannot "ruin" a battery like in the old days the $100 it will cost me to replace this one when it gives out is well worth the convenience of not caring.

-Eric

[adambyte]

I'd say that the way you're using your battery now sounds fine. It IS inevitable, but if you use it fully and charge it fully, you really will maximize the battery's life.

When other people were complaining that their 1st and 2nd generation iPods couldn't hold a charge, mine was running just fine because I practiced good battery usage.

[tinroots]

Thanks much! Is the Remaining Capacity stating how much it is able to charge anymore, or how much at the moment it is charged? Yours says

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3803
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 3754

but mine was listed as:
Battery Installed: Yes
First low level warning: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3761
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 2638
Amperage (mA): 1480
Voltage (mV): 16292
Cycle Count: 76

but is currently charging at the moment.. scares me that my full capacity and remaining capacity have such a larger difference than yours.

i'll check later on to see if it changes... just thought you might know!
Very cool to learn about - I would never have found that!

[tinroots]

why is there an iPod ad under my original post? did i do that?

[lurk]

Ads happen it is no big deal.

Mine was fully charged and running AC power that the time. 100% is kind of approximate so as you can se mine stopped about 49 mAh shy of the full capacity. That will vary and drop over time as you battery ages, the full charge capacity will change as well. So when you only have enough juice to hold 30 mins of charge it will still be 100% for that battery.

[ecirtap]

Thanks for all the info here!

A friend told me that he did some research on the subject last year, and that apparently your battery will have a longer lifespan if you *take the battery out* while you are hooked up to the AC! I've been doing this for a while now - but of course I do not have a 2nd iBook so I could test whether there is any difference in a year or two...

To save quite a bit of money when you buy a replacement battery, I can recommend refurbished batteries (available on eBay). I bought one last year for my (now retired) iBook G3, and it had much better capacity than the one I'd received with my machine!

[lurk]

I disagree with your friend about taking it out. Modern batteries have complex voltage regulation circuitry that cut them off when they are fully charged, just as effective as taking them out. That really just sounds like you friend is cargo culting.