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WizOSX · Oct 18, 2003, 07:40 PM

I currently have a 700mhz iBook comb drive that I am considering replacing with a 12" 1ghz Powerbook. One very annoying thing about the iBook (which I otherwise like) is that if you remove the battery and run on just the power supply, everything is messed up because the time is reset to 1970. Email is a complete mess, Virtual PC is a mess etc. Put the battery back in and all is fine.

Can you run the 12" with battery removed?

icruise · Oct 18, 2003, 07:49 PM

Why do you want to run it without a battery? It doesn't affect the life of the battery to do so.

AssassyN · Oct 18, 2003, 10:15 PM

Yeah, don't run it w/o it simply b/c it won't hurt the battery, and it's a nice backup if your AC power flashes.

WizOSX · Oct 18, 2003, 10:27 PM

Thanks icruise and assassyn. I thought I might try to run without the battery due to an experience a friend had recently. His battery died after about a year of use in his PC laptop. The people he bought it from said emphatically that keeping the battery plugged in all the time significantly reduces the life of any laptop battery. Now I've had lots of laptops over the years (both Apple and PC) and never had this problem but...

Also, do either of you run your machines with the lid closed on an external monitor? Does this work on the new 12" (definitely doesn't on the iBook).

AssassyN · Oct 18, 2003, 10:47 PM

Yeah, they're designed to not charge the battery theoretically past 95%, so it won't overcharge & damage itself.

Also, I use my PB's w/ the lid shut & an external mouse/keyboard/monitor all the time, and it works perfect on all PowerBook, including the 12" PB.

ae86_16v · Oct 19, 2003, 12:49 AM

I run w/o my battery. . . but that is on my 15". But if you are connected to the net, you could set the Time to be "Use Network Time Server".

icruise · Oct 19, 2003, 01:21 AM

Originally posted by WizOSX:
Thanks icruise and assassyn. I thought I might try to run without the battery due to an experience a friend had recently. His battery died after about a year of use in his PC laptop. The people he bought it from said emphatically that keeping the battery plugged in all the time significantly reduces the life of any laptop battery.

Sounds like a classic case of shifting the blame onto the consumer. In any case, I don't think that this is an issue. The powerbooks are designed to be run with the batteries in.

michael_on_mac · Oct 20, 2003, 01:57 AM

Originally posted by WizOSX:
The people he bought it from said emphatically that keeping the battery plugged in all the time significantly reduces the life of any laptop battery.

Which is perfectly true.

Battery life (=capacity) goes down even by leaving it lying around. If you do leave it lying around in a hot place (=your powerbook), this process, like almost every chemical process, is accelerated.

From about 10 per cent per year this goes down to 30 or more percent per year.

Anyway, there is only a small number of Li-ion battery manufacturers worldwide, and Apple just buys with one of them. Their batteries may be above industry
standard, but they cannot avoid aging.

Michael.

(Reference: c't magazine, 2003)