How to Preserve Battery Life?

dstranathandstranathan
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Anyone have tips on how to keep laptop batteries in good, long lasting shape?



I seem to keep my PowerBooks just a couple years before my battery life lasts about 30 minutes! I have a PC laptop that wont run longer than 5 minutes on its battery.



One thing about me is that I use my laptops on my desk (with AC power) 99% of the time, and only use the battery a few critical times a year (of course, when I REALLY need it, it fails!)



Should I drain/charge them regularly?



Should I remove the battery and not use it at all at certain times?



Should I NOT plug in my laptops to the AC all the time?



Can I recondition them?



Any advice would be great!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    hledgardhledgard Posts: 265member
    Neat topic for me too.



    I have an Ibook, use the battery about 2 hours a day, and by six months, it lasts only 30 minutes, 8 months 10 minutes.



    I have the screen set to high, but go dark in one minute of non-use.



    And a new battery is over $129.



    I have just assumed that is the way it is



    Thanks,

    Dr. L
  • Reply 2 of 5
    1337_5l4xx0r1337_5l4xx0r Posts: 1,558member
    I hardly used my two wallstreet batteries in my two wallstreets. Right now, neither charges from being in storage for four months, but prior to that, i'd easily get 2.5-3 hours of use by having both of them in the same laptop. These are 4.5-5 year old batteries.



    My Ti is only 6 months old so too early to say about that.



    Who knows. Maybe God singles out people and flattens their batteries.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    dstranathandstranathan Posts: 1,717member
    God has singled me out. It's like Dante's inferno:



    level one: PowerBook battery drainage. Grrr.



    Level two: Limited Airport range! Damn him!



    Level three: Apple makes me BUY Panther after I fork over $2,000+ for a G5. Steve grows horns from his head.



    ...





    Final level: The Windows XP boot screen. Hi Bill.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    I made a Location for each networking port on my PowerBook 12" and one with them all off (Plugged in) and all off (Battery everything off). Turning off unnecessary networking devices saves battery. Also dim the screen, let the hard drive sleep, and lower CPU cycles. And take any CDs out of the drive! For some stupid reason even when opening files on a local drive computers like to spin up other drives, don't know why. Plus opening programs and files before you unplug probably saves battery by loading stuff to RAM so the drive can sleep.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    mrmistermrmister Posts: 1,095member
    The short answer is that battery tech ain't so hot, so thems the breaks--I need to get my battery swapped this week under AppleCare because of short life.
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