Bruce Mitchell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>My Mac guru advises that it is wise not to keep a PB plugged in all the time
>but instead let the battery run down fully at least every few weeks, that
>doing so will actually enhance the life span of the battery. He seems to be
>correct, as with every PB I have owned I have had spare batteries for the
>other bay which get little use and they always die long before the main
>battery which I let wear down periodically.
Your Mac guru is correct with respect to nimh and nicad batteries but
wrong when it comes to LiIon batteries which lose significant life every
time they're fully discharged. Every few weeks would is certainly
overkill. That said, it can be useful to occasionally calibrate LiIon
batteries.
The best advice I've seen for maximizing LiIon battery runtime, as posted
to usenet by "Peter" (whose last name escapes me at this moment):
------------------------------------------
(Peter's Trickle Calibration)
1. charge fully and then some
2. in terminal,
ioreg -p IODeviceTree -n battery -w0 | grep Bat
(make a note of your Capacity -- should be around 4000 or more)
sudo pmset -b spindown 1 sleep 0 reduce 1 dim 1
(prevents idle-sleep, and after 1 idle minute spins down your disk,
reduces your processor speed, and turns off the LCD when on battery)
(Maybe in Panther you can do that without pmset, but Jaguar is broken)
3. shut down all applications. turn off airport,
disconnect anything external -- keyborad, mouse, printers,
and finally, power.
4. LEAVE IT ALONE -- DO NOT TOUCH IT
5. W A I T (5 hours or more ...)
6. eventually your notebook will go to sleep
7. plug it in. wait 3 minutes. (mebbe 5 to be sure :-)
8. ioreg -p IODeviceTree -n battery -w0 | grep Bat
(Has it re-evaluated your Capacity?)
9. leave it alone and let it charge fully.
10. if the Capacity changed significantly, you might want to repeat
the calibration cycle.
11. Adjust your battery-power management settings to make it sleep
at a more reasonable time.
Note -- *calibration* means helping the battery's firmware estimate the
battery's capacity.
------------------------------------------
Obviously, the bits about using terminal to read and set some parameters
are not applicable to those using a classic MacOS, but the idea remains
the same. The discharge should be as slow as possible.
hth,
Dan K
.................................
http://macdan.n3.net/
carracho://dankephoto.dhs.org:9700
hotline://dankephoto.dhs.org:9500
.................................
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