October 3, 2007
Laptop Batteries: How to make them last longer
In the life of laptop batteries, there is a lot of differences. I’ve owned a lot of laptops, and worked on a lot more. My experiences say that Apple consistently has the longer battery life. Especially a year later after heavy use. Atbatt.com has a nice post about how to extend the per charge battery life.
The provided tips are pretty obvious, calibration, power management, don’t expose to extreme temperatures, don’t watch DVD’s, plays games or other CPU intensive actions, etc.
Currently under moderate use my Macbook Pro is getting roughly 4 hours per a charge. I try to follow the above tips, but in day to day, must get work done use it’s near impossible. Despite reported problems with the Macbook batteries I’m impressed that the life of the battery still remains fairly strong. I’ve had several Compaqs, an IBM, and even a Dell Latitutde which (claims up to seven hours.) Each and every one was down to two to two and a half hours after a mere year of regular use.
But despite that the battery will get worse overtime. Battery University has a great article on prolonging the life of Lithium Ion batteries of all times. Among those covered before, they suggest storing the battery at 40% charge. It can also be stored in a freezer as the cold will help extend life, versus excessive heat sapping it. Another suggestion is to fully discharge it every 30 charges, instead of every five as use to be older wisdom.
Of course if you do not NEED the battery and are connected to power normally it’s best to remove the battery totally. This will greatly increase the life. If it’s a new battery it’s recommended that you fully charge it, fully discharge it and then use it from there. The hardest part though is knowing what is really going on with your battery. Luckily for us Apple folks, Battery Health Monitor does an awesome job of giving you all kinds of specs, including how much the batteries maximum charge is. This is really helpful when you’re juggling multiple batteries and need to know at a glance how long each one has.
Related posts: