Proper use of iBook battery

[faizal]

Hi All,

Gonna get my iBook this weekend and very excited abt it.

Anyway, what is the best way to prolong the iBook battery life?
Read somewhere that it is recommended to fully use the battery until the battery juice dries up and then recharge it. in this manner the battery woudl be fully utilised before we start charging it.

I also read that by plugging in the power even when the battery is fully charged would shorten the battery life.

TIA

 

[steven_lufc]

My iBook sits charging whenever I am not using it whether it is fully charged or not. The first time you use it you are advised to fully charge and then fully drain, then fully charge again. This 'calibrates' the battery, and is the same with my iPod (and I'm guessing all recharchable batteries). Go here for more info. There is a battery section.

 

[Jeffo]

i have the G3/500 ibook and it is about 3 years old now i think and i can get about an hour out of it. when it was new i could squeeze about 3:30 - 4:00 out of it. I plug it in when ever i can and it NEVER gets shut off. the only time it is sleeping is when i am transporting it. when it is at home or at work it is open and awake. occasionally i will use it in the living room and sleep it when i am too lazy to go plug it in.

 

[michaelsanford]

I have an iBook Graphite (clamshell) circa 1999 with OS X (which I might add NEVER spins down the hard disk no matter what I do) and I can get nearly 2.5 hours out of it.

I almost always completely kill the battery before charging it and once I plug it in to recharge I wait until it's completely charged before I unplug it (interrupting the charge cycle).

If you leave your iBook plugged in for a long time it will also last a bit longer for that charge cycle. That's because, if I can put it this way, the battery charge speed decelerates as the battery fills up. I can fill the battery from 5 % to 10 % in 2 minutes, but it sometimes takes 10 minutes to fill it from 95 % to 100 %. You'll also notice that once it's at "100 %" it may switch into charge mode for a few minutes now and then, just part of what I mentioned before.

The first time I got my iBook it had been charging constantly for over 2 weeks, it lasted 5 hours (with OS 9 which makes a huge difference).