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It’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally?
Friday July 17, 2009

I've been reading in various places about how the battery in my laptop and my cell phone should be maintained to maximize battery life. Here is an extract from an Apple site (http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html)

Standard Maintenance
For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time. An ideal use would be a commuter who uses her MacBook Pro on the train, then plugs it in at the office to charge. This keeps the battery juices flowing. If on the other hand, you use a desktop computer at work, and save a notebook for infrequent travel, Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month. Need a reminder? Add an event to your desktop’s iCal.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I like being able to use my computer's at their full capacity. This means that when I am at home, I leave my laptop plugged in 90% of the time. This gives me a couple of things

I get full CPU and IO power to have the computer service my every whim as quickly as it can.
When I need to go mobile with my laptop, my battery is fully charged

If this goes against the recommended way to work with a laptop, WHY don't laptops come with utilities and ability to discharge the battery while they are plugged in?

If I had such a utility, and I knew I was going to be at my machine for the better part of the day, I could just start the utility and let it do its magic. As it stands, I am stuck unplugging and using the machine in its less than optimal settings until the battery dies. I don't like it, so someone please fix it.

Note, with the new 17" Apple Mac Book Pro, the battery lasts a long time. Meaning I get to spend more time in this less than optimal state. I understand that I can maximize my power savings settings to decrease the lifetime of the battery. But then, what to do when I am on the road and want my power savings to maximize the lifetime of the battery.

(2009-07-17 10:12:18.0) Permalink Comments [0]

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