[treebark7182]

Whats the best way to get the most life out of your battery? Are there things you should/shouldnt do?? Is it bad to leave it plugged in?

[dreilly1]

I remember reading that Apple recommends that you don't keep the laptop plugged in for long periods of time. They say that the way to get the best battery life is to charge it overnight, use it unplugged during the day, and plug it in at night when most of the battery power is exhausted.

With that said, though, I have an iBook and my wife has a Powerbook from late 2002, and we both will keep ours plugged in for days at a time sometimes, and when we unplug it, we rarely drain the battery before plugging it back in. If we've lost any battery life, it isn't noticable.

[southtdi]

Here are the 2 main ips apple gives for getting the most out of the battery. I didn't use them and I was beginning to see a loss of life. Fortunantly for me the battery decided to take an early dump and I got it replaced under warranty.

Maximizing battery charge

Calibrating battery for best performance

[treebark7182]

i read that you can leave LI-ion batteries ie. ipod and powerbooks plugged in as long as you want w/out hurting battery life/longevity. Is this true?

[JKT]

Originally posted by treebark7182:
i read that you can leave LI-ion batteries ie. ipod and powerbooks plugged in as long as you want w/out hurting battery life/longevity. Is this true?

Yes and no. It is true that you can't "overcharge" them like you could with the Ni based batteries, and keeping them plugged in doesn't do any harm that way, but leaving the battery in does expose it to excessive heat if you do anything CPU or GPU intense on your Mac. If you want to improve the life of your battery even further, you should remove it while using the computer plugged in (within reason - if you're in a dusty.dirty environment, that isn't practical).

Apple has a whole section devoted to batteries