[Mallrat]

I've noticed a pattern with my laptop, cell phone, iPod... none of them has ever come close to the stated battery life.

I wonder why this is. I thought Lithum Ion fixed this memory problem, but it still seems that you have to do a lot of work to get the best life out of your battery.

Question is, are there steps to good battery life. On my Ibook I have it plugged it most of the time, but when I want to use the battery, I only get about 1hour and 1/2, much less than most people get.

When I get a new laptop, are there steps I should take to get best battery life?

Does the battery lose life if you always have your computer plugged in? In other words, do you have to use the battery when you first get the computer to teach it how long it shoudl last.

I heard something about cycling the battery.

For people that get good battery life, did it just work or did you have do spend time making it work?

Thank you.

[parsec_kadets]

As far as cycling your battery goes, yes you do need to do that. And it is a good idea to do that from time to time. You'll notice that your computer may continue to operate for a few minutes after it reaches 0%. When this occurs the power manager adjusts itself to make more accurate estimates in the future. As for maxing your battery life, there are a few things you can do. The biggest power sucker on any laptop is the display. You can reduce the amount of power it uses by reducing the brightness. I found that if I tuned my brightness down I usually got about an extra hour of use. Other things that drain power are the hard drive and the CD drive. If you're watching a DVD your battery will run out much faster than advertised. As for the hard drive, make sure that the Energy Saver (in the System Preferences) is set to spin down the hard drive whenever possible. This will get you some extra time too. Finally, laptop batteries can only hold their full charge for two or three years. If you're iBook is that old you may want to consider buying a new battery.