Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Spliff · Mar 13, 2003, 02:52 PM

A friend of mine has a Powerbook G4 (600 Mhz) and he never removes the battery, even when the laptop is using the AC adaptor (which is most of the time).

Does this have any effect on the battery? Should the battery be removed from laptops when using the AC adaptor?

RMXO · Mar 13, 2003, 03:06 PM

Originally posted by Spliff:
A friend of mine has a Powerbook G4 (600 Mhz) and he never removes the battery, even when the laptop is using the AC adaptor (which is most of the time).

Does this have any effect on the battery? Should the battery be removed from laptops when using the AC adaptor?

i rem'd i made a poll on asking ppl if they had their battery in while using the AC Adapter. most ppl said they did or their laptop was always on battery until they had to charge it up again.

i use the adapter most & i dont have any problems at all.

euphras · Mar 13, 2003, 03:24 PM

Use the Book always with battery installed, even when you�re plugged to AC. When there�s accidental power failure, you loose all your non-saved data. The battery life isn�t affected.

Pat

badnewsblair · Mar 14, 2003, 03:26 AM

Keep the battery in, always.

TiSteve · Mar 14, 2003, 03:36 AM

Also rememeber reading (at least with the TiSD), that the processor steps down when using the PowerBook on AC without a battery installed.

iBorg · Mar 14, 2003, 10:49 AM

A timely question, as MacFixIt posted this yesterday:

"In our on-going coverage of the Mac OS X 10.2.4 portable battery drain issue (see articles 1, 2 and 3), we have found that while totally draining a lithium ion battery may help in some cases to reset the time-remaining indicator, doing so regularly may actually damage your battery.

Also, lithium ion batteries do not need to be trickle charged and will in fact deteriorate slightly, if they are continuously charged. Because of that, it makes sense to pull the battery when it's full.

Third, the life expectancy of a lithium ion battery is greatly increased, if it's never fully discharged. One reader says that shallow discharges can increase the life of a battery to well beyond 10,000 charge cycles."

I'd never heard this about Li-ion batteries before. Anyone else have useful tips about extending battery life?

iBorg

ima_pseudonym · Mar 14, 2003, 11:33 AM

Originally posted by iBorg:
A timely question, as MacFixIt posted this yesterday:

"Also, lithium ion batteries do not need to be trickle charged and will in fact deteriorate slightly, if they are continuously charged. Because of that, it makes sense to pull the battery when it's full."

But keep in mind that tibooks (at least the more recent ones) are designed to avoid trickle charging - that is why even when plugged in the battery drains down from 100% to about 95% before it starts recharging.

webb3201 · Mar 14, 2003, 11:45 AM

I was under the impression the powermanager would ensure that once charged, the battery would no longer charge while plugged in, thus making removal not necessary.

AssassyN · Mar 14, 2003, 01:14 PM

Originally posted by iBorg:
A timely question, as MacFixIt posted this yesterday:

"In our on-going coverage of the Mac OS X 10.2.4 portable battery drain issue (see articles 1, 2 and 3), we have found that while totally draining a lithium ion battery may help in some cases to reset the time-remaining indicator, doing so regularly may actually damage your battery.

Also, lithium ion batteries do not need to be trickle charged and will in fact deteriorate slightly, if they are continuously charged. Because of that, it makes sense to pull the battery when it's full.

Third, the life expectancy of a lithium ion battery is greatly increased, if it's never fully discharged. One reader says that shallow discharges can increase the life of a battery to well beyond 10,000 charge cycles."

I'd never heard this about Li-ion batteries before. Anyone else have useful tips about extending battery life?

iBorg

Wait, so this basically goes *against* leaving the battery in...hmm, anyone believe this to be true? Surely they wouldn't design a battery that would perform worse if you leave it in while plugged into the wall, eh? I'm very interested in an answer to this post as well, as a large majority of the time my 17" PB will be plugged into the wall.

dialo · Mar 14, 2003, 06:55 PM

It's just a stupid battery.

Anyway, it takes about a year of daily combined battery/ac use (with the battery always in and the computer always on or sleeping, and always on AC when possible) before the battery life is shortened too much to make it through a 2 1/2 hour class with reduced processor. What do I do, buy a new battery and keep the old one in my bag charged for extra back-up.

$120/year new battery charge for a $3000 G4 that goes anywhere I want doesn't seem that bad to me.

But what do I know? Hell, going through all of the trouble of removing the battery every 15 minutes might be worth it, but probably not.

seanyepez · Mar 14, 2003, 11:09 PM

Keep the battery in the PowerBook. Batteries, like the computer they serve, are meant to be used.

Karim · Mar 15, 2003, 01:46 AM

Imagine if we all had to pop out the batteries from our cordless phones, cell phones, videocameras etc. when we weren't using them.

Keep your battery in your computer. The trickle charging issue is a 1980's to early-mid 1990's problem that has gone away in modern products.

Worst case, buy a new battery every year to maintain 100% usuability time or every two years for 80% etc..

dialo · Mar 17, 2003, 11:56 AM

FYI: according to x-charge, a battery monitoring application, my battery stops charging when it hits 100%. Interestingly, if I plug into AC when the battery is above 95% or 96%, it doesn't even bother to charge it.

So the power manager looks like it recognizes when the battery is charged and doesn't keep pumping juice into it.

Leave the battery in.

Chris Grande · Mar 17, 2003, 01:53 PM

Also, with the TiBooks if you remove the battery you end up removing one of the computers feet. Causes a slight wobble.

Eug · Mar 17, 2003, 02:07 PM

Originally posted by euphras:
Use the Book always with battery installed, even when you�re plugged to AC. When there�s accidental power failure, you loose all your non-saved data. The battery life isn�t affected.

I once unplugged the AC adapter in OS 9, having forgotten that I had removed the battery.

The drive was hosed. It was unbootable except via Firewire. Trying to select the alternate OS etc. didn't work. I had to do a complete reformat.

Interestingly, ALL my OS 9 and OS X apps on the primary partition and ALL my data on the secondary partition were intact and completely accessible via target mode. I guess only the boot sectors or whatever were hosed. (The interesting part is I don't even have another Mac. I used my Windows machine with MacDrive to access the TiBook via target mode.)

ae86_16v · 05:09 PM

I take mine out, I use my Ti800 primarily as a desktop replacement.

Plus the rubber legs are on the chassis not on the battery itself.

ae86_16v · Mar 18, 2003, 05:05 PM

Originally posted by ae86_16v:
I take mine out, I use my Ti800 primarily as a desktop replacement.

Plus the rubber legs are on the chassis not on the battery itself. .