I have a Macbook Air so my battery charges up pretty fast. I keep hearing that I should let my laptop's battery completely die once in a while. Is that true? Or does that just harm my computer? Also I almost never use the AC power cord to charge it, I use the power adapter.Should I use both to charge my laptop? one more question: what is this about charging my laptop by cycles?
MacBook Air
I keep hearing that I should let my laptop's battery completely die once in a while.
whoever told you that, lied to you. Never do that on purpose, ever. if you merely did it once or twice, ok.....however its never good.
Its based upon an OLD notion of "battery conditioning/calibration"
of which:
Do not perform “battery calibration” on your current Macbook. There is no calibration of current Apple portable Macbooks with built-in batteries.
The one surefire way to ruin a lithium battery is squeezing it dead, no ifs, ands or buts.
General consideration of your MacBook battery
Contrary to popular myths about notebook batteries, there is protection circuitry in your Macbook and therefore you cannot ‘overcharge’ your notebook when plugged in and already fully charged.
However if you do not plan on using your notebook for several hours, turn it off (plugged in or otherwise), since you do not want your Macbook ‘both always plugged in and in sleep mode’.
A lot of battery experts call the use of Lithium-Ion cells the "80% Rule", meaning use 80% of the full charge or so, then recharge them for longer overall life. The main quantified damage done in the use of Lithium Ion batteries are instances where the internal notebook battery is “often drained very low”, this is bad general use of your notebook battery.
All batteries in any device are a consumable meant to be replaced eventually after much time, even under perfect use conditions.
➕If the massive amount of data that exists on lithium batteries were to be condensed into a simplex, helpful, and memorable bit of information it would be:
1. While realistically a bit impractical during normal everyday use, a lithium battery's longevity and its chemistry's health is most happy swinging back and forth between 20% and 85% charge roughly.
2. Do not purposefully drain your battery very low (10% and less), and do not keep them charged often or always high (100%).
3. Lithium batteries do not like the following:
A: Deep discharges, as meaning roughly 10% or less. Avoid this in all instances if you can. This is hard on your battery.
B: Rapid discharges as referring to energy intensive gaming on battery on a frequent basis (in which case while gaming, if possible, do same on power rather than battery).
C: Constant inflation, as meaning always or most often on charge, and certainly not both in sleep mode and on charge always or often.
From Apple on batteries:
http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1446
"Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time."
I keep hearing that I should let my laptop's battery completely die once in a while.
whoever told you that, lied to you. Never do that on purpose, ever. if you merely did it once or twice, ok.....however its never good.
Its based upon an OLD notion of "battery conditioning/calibration"
of which:
Do not perform “battery calibration” on your current Macbook. There is no calibration of current Apple portable Macbooks with built-in batteries.
The one surefire way to ruin a lithium battery is squeezing it dead, no ifs, ands or buts.
General consideration of your MacBook battery
Contrary to popular myths about notebook batteries, there is protection circuitry in your Macbook and therefore you cannot ‘overcharge’ your notebook when plugged in and already fully charged.
However if you do not plan on using your notebook for several hours, turn it off (plugged in or otherwise), since you do not want your Macbook ‘both always plugged in and in sleep mode’.
A lot of battery experts call the use of Lithium-Ion cells the "80% Rule", meaning use 80% of the full charge or so, then recharge them for longer overall life. The main quantified damage done in the use of Lithium Ion batteries are instances where the internal notebook battery is “often drained very low”, this is bad general use of your notebook battery.
All batteries in any device are a consumable meant to be replaced eventually after much time, even under perfect use conditions.
➕If the massive amount of data that exists on lithium batteries were to be condensed into a simplex, helpful, and memorable bit of information it would be:
1. While realistically a bit impractical during normal everyday use, a lithium battery's longevity and its chemistry's health is most happy swinging back and forth between 20% and 85% charge roughly.
2. Do not purposefully drain your battery very low (10% and less), and do not keep them charged often or always high (100%).
3. Lithium batteries do not like the following:
A: Deep discharges, as meaning roughly 10% or less. Avoid this in all instances if you can. This is hard on your battery.
B: Rapid discharges as referring to energy intensive gaming on battery on a frequent basis (in which case while gaming, if possible, do same on power rather than battery).
C: Constant inflation, as meaning always or most often on charge, and certainly not both in sleep mode and on charge always or often.
From Apple on batteries:
http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1446
"Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time."
Thanks! This really did help! But about the AC power cord and the power adapter; is it bad that I always just use the power adapter to charge my laptop?
Its fine either way, just see 3C above and avoid that.
Is it bad to let my Macbook Air battery die once in a while?
