--- victoria brandon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Is this procedure more effective than running the > Battery Recondition > program?
Well, this is a debatable issue. :-) Some people like battery reconditioning software, others don't. My personal opinion? I've never used a battery recondition program and likely never will. (And all my laptop batteries - even the ones that are close to 5 years old still give me close to 2 hours of run time.) I've always been a hardware based guy. Having software "recondition" your battery has always seemed strange to me. Reconditioning is a process of reclaiming physical charging abilities of your battery. I prefer to use physical means to achieve those results. I'm not saying reconditioning software doesn't work. I'm sure it does, and I know lots of people use it. But I have been reconditioning batteries through parallel cycling for the past 12 years or so. In that time, nobody has convinced me that reconditioning software does it any better. I've also seen people get really weird results after using a reconditioning software... results that I've never experienced by using my method. (Things like the machine recognizes the battery but only gives you 20-30 minutes of charge time, then, after using the reconditioning software, the machine won't recognize the battery at all.) But remember too, the earlier you catch your battery losing time and attempt to correct it, the better your results will be. If you use your battery only on rare occasions, and notice after a year that you are only getting 15 minutes, then my method of recharging it will likely get you somewhere between 30minutes to an hour of total charge time back, but will never restore it to full factory specs. Over time the cells get damaged, and if they are too damaged, your only choices would then be to rebuild the cells (physically) or just dispose of the battery and buy a new one. I usually try to keep all my batteries in top running condition, but I also don't religiously believe what my battery meter is telling me either. (Probably comes from working with laptops years ago when battery meters were a luxury, not a standard - and they weren't always accurate.) Anyway, when y meter drops below 50%, if I'm not at a point where I'm ready to let the unit fully discharge, I'll plug it in. If you are seeing your battery meter "drop" and not gradually show a reduction in charge, then use your wristwatch to really figure out whats up with your battery. Does your battery meter show 80-90% charge for an hour and then drop to 42% all of a sudden? If so, the 42% is probably accurate - the machine has been running for an hour at this point and a two hour charge is probably average. This would tell me that there isn't anything wrong with the battery, but with the software that is monitoring the battery life. Then I'd think about trying to reinstall it, or finding a thrid party app that seemed more reliable... Just my $.02 Take it for what it's worth... ;-) Cheers, Sionnach __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com -- PowerBooks is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PowerBooks list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/powerbooks.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/powerbooks%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
