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Studying the Slow Decay of a Laptop Battery For an Entire Year
First time accepted submitter jradavenport writes "I've been keeping a log of the health of my MacBook Air battery for the past year, taking samples every minute I use the computer (152,411 readings so far!). This has allowed me to study both my own computing/work habits, but also the fascinating rapid decay of battery capacity. Comparing it to my previous 2009 MacBook Pro, the battery in this 2012 Air is degrading much faster."
You're discharging it wrong, don't do that.
Let's see the comparative graph where you did identical tracking over time for both, instead of detailed now against casual before, which seems a bit weak. I'd also like to see how you factor out the constant logging's effect as well.
I got 10 hours of battery life on my 2011 macbook air when I first got it. I don't just mean 10 hours of it sitting idle either. I could get 7 hours of continuous play of movies. Then Mountain Lion came out and I was lucky to get 3 hours tops. That lasted 6 months until they "fixed" it and I was able to get 5 again. Now in I can consistently get 4 hours with it sitting mostly idle.
I love the machine but I hate that I cant change the battery myself. I'll have to pay the Apple tax to get this fixed. I am holding out hope for Mavericks though, hopefully the power saving features can breathe some new life into this thing.
I seem to be constantly fighting the battle with battery life, and it is a topic that I am acutely worried about, thanks to the newest generation of phones which seem to have settled on non-replaceable batteries. I found this very interesting. Glad someone took the time to take these measurements and write it up.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
you should have brushed it at least twice a day.
Ha, I actually stopped reading at "Without further adieu". But that says more about me than the author, I suppose...
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
He finds the failure of a product he paid good money for fascinating, rather than infuriating.
Nice to have if the power goes out unexpectedly, but shut down ASAP.
- Citation please about Apple's batteries being bad? That would mean statistically worse than other brands? - RAM fixed, ok I see your point, on the other hand I think it is the price to pay when building something as slender as a Macbook Air. - insecure and buggy OS: Is it worse than Windows? There are not so many stories about OSX being hacked into. Not saying that it isn't perfect but it seems to work pretty well. Why paying the premium? Yes, I like many of their products (scorn on me here on /.). Very concisely: I am happy how in general it all works substantially well and simply. I even like the painless app store. Of course I will now be dismissed as a poser and a hipster, but really I don't care. I never speak bad about Windows or Linux fans either, each to his own.
I almost stopped there, but I admit to proceeding because I was looking for more grammatical mistakes. Oh, and I was interested in the battery life too.
Your software is querying the battery, which in turn takes battery power. If you keep asking it to check on itself every minute, you are decreasing its life expectancy in so doing. While it wouldn't produce as rich of a data set, if you really want to know how long your battery lasts at idle, you need to track it with pen and paper.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
1) It's "without further ado," not adieu.
You're making much adieu about nothing.
Cockadieudledoo!
So far as I can tell, you're looking at the reported capacity from the intelligent charging circuitry. From my experience, and the reports I've heard, this has only a tenuous connection to reality.
From what I can see, the author has not actually ever measured the unit's battery life.
What the study shows is that logging the battery life every 1 minute prevents the laptop from staying in a low power state for long periods of time. This is like flipping your house lights on and off every 1 minute for a whole year and wondering why your power bill is rising through the roof.
1) Oh shit, you're absolutely right. I'm a bit anal about such things as well, changing it now!! 2) I'd wondered that too, that by measuring it i'm actually causing changes. I'd love to conduct a larger study to control for such things.
Most modern lithium batteries should *not* be cycled or discharged "fully"--such a practice degrades the battery capacity quite rapidly. I think the practice of fully discharging the battery comes from the NiMH-type rechargeable AA(A) batteries.
Yeah, sometimes people recommend fully discharging a lithium battery during operation so that the monitoring software can recalibrate it's battery power meter to adjust for the decline in total capacity, but I'm not sure it's worth it.
As mentioned earlier, temperature is a big factor as well. Maybe Haswell will save the day...
Ha, I actually stopped reading at "Without further adieu". But that says more about me than the author, I suppose...
Maybe it is the unconscious suggestion that he had finished what he was saying? An unconscious Alt-F4 -- the adieu button.
They are considered disposable and if you can make it until the next upgrade cycle/treadmill they don't care.
For those of us who actually buy our phone outright, it sucks.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Bad batteries something Apple is famous for, RAM fixed to the logic board, insecure and buggy OS, and a host of other complaints makes me wonder why anyone pays the premium for Apple any longer.
Presumably the same reason someone pays big bucks to drink coffee made from coffee beans that have been in a civet's anus.
I don't think so. State-of-health measurement can be a subtle art but it all comes down to measuring the cell's voltage and resistance over time*, which at the end of the day you're getting for free when the battery is in use.
*Looking for voltage sag, rising internal resistance, or simply less area under the curve.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
If you stopped reading at ... "adieu" -- then technically - he got it right. Other than it might have read "with all the adieu" ... ?
Bad batteries something Apple is famous for, RAM fixed to the logic board, insecure and buggy OS, and a host of other complaints makes me wonder why anyone pays the premium for Apple any longer.
Maybe because that hasn't been most peoples' experience? I have a MacBook Pro that is almost 3 years old and the battery is still almost as good as the day I bought it. Of course, I make sure to run mine down once a month as recommended.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Apple get the same batteries from the same places everyone else does. They're as fungible as AAs at this point.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Most likely, but it's still something that should be checked definitively. In going from once a week to once a minute, you're increasing the sample rate by a factor of over 10,000. Even tiny effects could become magnified.
Because of the whole host of other problems with that suggestion.
Here is a small set of them, there are many more
1. expensive fuel cell
2. low density storage unless you go with expensive metal hydrides
3. H2 embrittles everything
4. far cheaper to make H2 via steam reformation of natural gas than electrolysis
Bad batteries something Apple is famous for, RAM fixed to the logic board, insecure and buggy OS, and a host of other complaints makes me wonder why anyone pays the premium for Apple any longer.
Your point would be an excellent one if reality wasn't exactly opposite to every statement in your post.
E pluribus unum
I love studies with a sample size of one. No statistics, no variability. Definitive.
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Mid+2012+Battery/10950/1
Does it hurt to be that stupid?
I guess what I'm saying is that there shouldn't be anything changing from the battery's perspective; the "multimeter" is always plugged in, as long as the computer's on. Unless the battery testing itself was driving up the power demands from the laptop, and thus drawing more current from the battery, it shouldn't make a difference.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Almost every iPhone on record has been more likely to shatter its screen than the one before it. Apple went from 1st in lowest malfunction rates to 6th from 2007 to 2011. The new ipad is heavier, runs hotter, and gets worse battery life than the one before it. This isn't exactly a new pattern that the battery in the new air is inferior. Everything Apple is going downhill.
Calculated battery capacity is an estimate, nothing more, used by power management to decide when the computer should be force-slept, then suspended to disk to keep from damaging the battery (ie, it's not useful to wake up too late from sleep to do the suspend-to-disk.)
The SMC's estimate is just that: an estimate. Errors build up over time, and certain things fake it out a bit. For example, note the capacity, unplug the laptop, use it for 30 minutes, plug it in. Immediately the value will be different. It'll change again when fully charged. Your battery capacity didn't actually change. Even in a perfect world, since batteries have internal resistance, capacity gauges can never be perfect(if you draw at X you'll get less power out than if you draw out at X*0.8), and the battery's capacity varies with temperature. Battery degradation is impacted by temperature as well, so unless you're controlling for temperature of the pack, this was a completely useless endeavor. The only way this would have been useful would've been to cycle several (probably a dozen or more) batteries on lab-grade equipment in a temperature-controlled environment.
The noise and big upward swings alone should tell you that using the SMC's estimate for the purposes of statistical analysis or trending is virtually useless.
The stupid shit I see "enthusiasts" of any product obsess over is absurd. The time wasted on such an exercise far outweighs the impact it possibly could have had on the author (and probably even 9-10 other people combined.) The batteries last for well over 6 hours. Most people using a ultrabook with the battery life of a Macbook Air have plenty of opportunities to charge their machines during the course of a day.
Please help metamoderate.
Exactly. That latter part is what should be ruled out. I agree it shouldn't. But what if it does?
A requirement of the form factor. If you check, most ultrabooks in a similar formfactor already solder the RAM on board. You can find ones with removable RAM but they typically are pushing the "Ultrabook" definition because Intel couldn't get anyone to make them otherwise (typically they have hard drives, or 15" screens or are heavier and significantly thicker).
Though, to be honest, I've rarely ever installed additional RAM in any PC I had - given its cost, it's usually cheaper to buy the max up front than in a few years when memory standards change and it's difficult to buy it cheaply (e.g., DDR or DDR2) - especially the larger modules - they either simply stop existing or are still wildly expensive years later.
My laptop is rarely off AC power. When I had the charger set to stop charging at 100% (and to recharge when 90%), my battery life greatly improved. OId battery dropped 60% in reported capacity in less than 2 yrs; new battery is barely down 30% in the following 4 years.
I call it Chinese electron torture for your battery -- drip, drip, drip.
I don't know how OS X controls battery charging, but all OS's should provide an option to stop charging at 100%.
Not something one can do when your battery gets low and you want to swap it out sitting in a coffee shop.
In my opinion, to be user replaceable, there should be no tools required (perhaps a latch one can turn with a dime would be OK). Certainly not a proprietary Apple 5 point driver bit.
Have gnu, will travel.
Agreed, I've had 3 different apple laptop batteries - and I've never got more than about a 2.5 hour charge on them, even brand new. I don't know where this bullshit about ~8 hour battery life comes from. I don't even use it that heavily, we're talking about 2.5 hours of internet and Word.
Dell 6430u, actually manages this quite well.
It uses an SSD and a 14" display. Honestly the best Dell I have seen in years as far as build quality goes.
Typically markup on day of sale on RAM upgrades from the OEM are 100%. We always get them with a lower amount of RAM and order more from newegg to have it arrive the same day.
Without knowing how deep the cycle was. Furthermore, the rate of discharge and temperature during the discharge will also have a fairly significant affect.
Basically, you will get about 1/10th the charge cycles out of a battery that is nearly completely discharged vs one that is only discharged to 10%.
Its better to really think of LI as providing a fixed number of watt hours. You can consume them in small bites, or you can consume them in big chunks but once you consume them they are gone.
The best rule for laptops is carry the charger and use it when at all possible.
Oh, and don't buy machines without replaceable batteries. If the "average" user can get 3 years out of it, and you decide your going to use all 8 hours of battery life every day, and charge it at night, you will probably be lucky if it lasts a year.
Plus, if your laptop gets hot (either by being left somewhere hot, or because of poor cooling) then the battery life is going to nose dive even if your plugged in. If your going to be doing a lot of intense gaming, your probably better taking the battery off and placing it somewhere cool (just don't let it discharge).
See this link http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
Alt-F4... Give me a little credit, will ya? I'm running Mint on my MBP, you insensitive clod!
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
I was thinking about it more during lunch. It's not just a battery test which occurs every minute, it's the entire script he wrote, including the testing and the subsequent appending of that data to a file. That could amount to a significant number of drive accesses which normally wouldn't have happened, especially at night when it would have otherwise been idle.
I don't know... In Linux if you turn on ACPI debugging, you can see that ACPI spouts constantly (maybe twice a minute or something like that) an event from the battery (CMB1 or other name). Maybe when you "poll" the battery, you simply get the most recent values that the ACPI driver stored from the latest report?
Nor do I. You can do whatever you want with your money, including sending it to Apple to purchase their overpriced hardware and buggy software... :)
My macbook air is cheaper than every other ultrabook on the market. You still haven't pointed out this "buggy" software you keep complaining about.
Maybe I'm a bit exaggerating here but, man... Anyone can measure how long the battery of a laptop lasts, but this guy actually put some effort to patiently capture the values long-term and, making the graphs of the battery decay and his computer use times. Good stuff, interesting report!
I don't need to think about it, the numbers are available. Batteries beat fuel cells if you use electrolysis.
Portable electronics use far more power than any small cylinder will provide. H2 is terrible volumetrically. Compressing it will not be enough, nor will liquefying it. Metal hydrides are the only option.
Your pockets are airtight? What kind of pants are you wearing?
I would not be surprised on bit, it is terrible compared to metal hydrides or batteries.
can be found at http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/
Really? You can't remove screws in public?
This user always has his multitool with him. The screws are not Apple proprietary they are available to anyone who wants to use them and you can easily swap it over to whatever you like for screws.
Could it be easier? Sure, but then rigidity of the case goes down. The dell 6430u is a pretty decent compromise. I personally don't swap batteries much so I am not worried about it.
Though, to be honest, I've rarely ever installed additional RAM in any PC I had - given its cost, it's usually cheaper to buy the max up front than in a few years when memory standards change and it's difficult to buy it cheaply (e.g., DDR or DDR2) - especially the larger modules - they either simply stop existing or are still wildly expensive years later.
I've never bought a Mac with RAM fixed to the logic board; and with pretty much every Mac I've ever bought, I've bought it with the minimum RAM configuration and then gone third party to top it up either immediately or within 2 years -- usually saving a few hundred dollars. The one thing Apple IS known for is overcharging for RAM. They've always done this, even back in the SIMM days. They argue that it's because they have higher standards, and thus you're only getting the best RAM from them. I've NEVER had a problem with using properly sourced cheaper RAM with a Mac.
Apple get the same batteries from the same places everyone else does. They're as fungible as AAs at this point.
Sure. That same place sells cheap batteries, more expensive batteries, and even more expensive batteries. Guess what batteries Apple buys.
One reason why Apple's laptop batteries are non-removable is because that allows them to pack the cells more tightly together and fit any empty space in the MacBook, that's how they fit more capacity in tighter space. So the batteries that Apple uses are definitely not the same that you get elsewhere.
Sorry, I intended that statement to be sarcasm... I was actually poking fun at the same folks who want to bash paid for software, simply because it costs money and they think it should be free.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Sometimes I wonder on slashdot if I should add [sarcasm] or [irony] or [humour] regularly just in case -- things can rapidly wander off into the abyss otherwise -- but I think we're more or less on track here ...
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Apple get a patent 3-4 years ago on batteries that can be shaped differently from "conventional" ones? This enables Apple to have flatter batteries, but still have the ampere-hours available to keep a device going.
insecure and buggy OS
Citation needed. Compared to the major alternatives, OS X is at least as secure as Windows or Linux. There still are no viruses on OS X, but there are now various forms of malware that users can get infected with if they inadvertently install them and supply the malware with their root password. Once you've handed a malicious program your password, there's nothing any OS can do to save you. OS X, like Linux, has never had self replicating worms that MS Windows has suffered from--though admittedly there hasn't been one in some time on Windows. Most security exploits on all platforms these days are 3rd party software like Java, not necessarily a flaw in the OS itself.
Hey, we can't help if if Apple makes their power adapters too small to use on a continuous basis.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Nope these are business PCs. On 30 of them you are talking several thousand dollars.
You actually dieu read the articles?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I learned this with my white MacBook.
Keep it plugged in.
You will use it sometimes when it's not plugged in, but for the most part, make sure it's plugged in when you're using it.
I tested my old white MB and the battery only lasted 1 year with one year of daily a "down to 20%" discharge and then a full charge.
I've been using my early 2011 MBP 17 with the "keep it charging, stupid" approach and the battery is still good for 2+ hours when unplugged, as long as I make sure to put Safari on standby when it's not in the foreground. Safari is a memory and processor pig to the extreme. Make sure to 1) not use it, or 2) use a script to set it and its child processes to be paused when in the background, or at least disable JavaScript when Safari is in the background.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I'm not sure about reason 4. I.e., while I agree that it is far cheaper to make H2 via steam reformation of natural gas than electrolysis, I'm not sure that would apply on a small sclae (i.e., home use), and any other choice implies distribution of hydrogen, which isn't cheap.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Like the flat batteries Polaroid introduced about 40 years ago?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Ah, but you do care. Thats why you responded.
If you actually didn't care, you would have had no need to tell us about it.
As far as old laptops, well, my time is worth far more than the cost of any MacBook Pro or any other laptop, if your time on the machine isn't valuable, then you can go with something 10 years old.
Of course, if you use it all day long, you're going to end up spending way more on power consumption in a year than if you'd just bought an over priced MBP ... but hey, don't let common sense keep you from doing stupid shit and wasting your money.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
2.5 hours would be probably normal if you were playing flash video for the entire time.
If you ACTUALLY had this experience, and reported it to Apple, they would have immediately replaced the battery for you.
Your post wreaks of someone who hasn't owned an Apple laptop in at least 5 years. I have a 2009 with the original battery that still does a solid 4 hours of web browsing, closer to 5 hours from a full charge. And that machine was my everyday use machine until last year.
Are you still talking about PowerPC runtimes, or are you just a liar in general?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Still apple has nothing on CISCO. they are still chargin over 200$ for 1 gig DDR. Same shit you can buy on ebay for less then 10.... But theyre DDR is made of unicorn.... ;)
It shows that you don't know the details of Apple's power delivery architecture. Magsafe-equipped Apple laptops are intentionally crippled in that the charger is artificially disabled if you use an unauthorized one. There's a chip in the magsafe plug that connects to the middle pin and is interrogated by the system management on the mainboard. If the interrogation fails, you can still use the power source, but the charger is disabled.
All it takes not to charge the battery is to cover the middle magsafe pin. I've done it by keeping in use one charger with a bad magsafe plug where the chip had died. Died how? Ah, exposure to the saliva of a 1 year old, he liked to lick those plugs, they admittedly taste "funny" since they are energized :)
That way you have the best of both worlds: you don't lose your work if the magsafe plug is kicked loose, and you don't charge the battery if you don't want to. Win-Win.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I'll feed the troll a bit. The least reliable part of a removable RAM module is the connector (from the POV of data corruption). Lose the connector and your reliability goes up by almost an order of magnitude. I think for at least a decade removable RAM modules have been just a dumb thing to have in a portable computer. They take up lots of volume and are just a pain to deal with, engineering-wise. Normally it becomes cheap enough to max out your RAM within 1-2 years after purchase, so just deal with it and put the max RAM on the board on day one.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I've been running a Linux desktop from well before KDE was out, then hopped onto KDE 1 and kept on it till KDE 4 came out. The things on the horizon were becoming progressively worse in KDE-land midway through the 3.x series. As soon as KDE 4 was out, the horizon was here and not there, and I've reluctantly switched to Windows XP at work, and very soon thereafter to a Mac. I've switched to an iMac at home about the time of KDE 3.5.7. Just the fact that I know how to tinker with things to keep them going doesn't mean I should be an overpaid technician working on my computer all the time, so I can't but agree with you. I'd much rather do other, more interesting things, things that actually bring my employer money. I still use a lot of open source software, just that I didn't have to fuck about with my computer since 2007 or so at home, and IIRC since early 2009 at work.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
On an early 2008 17" MBP running XP in VMware Fusion at minimum backlight, I'd routinely get 7-8 hours of use on transpacific flights on a new battery. Of course the DVD, Wifi, Ethernet and USB systems were powered down.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I can confirm this. I saw NAKED LiON cells (1000mah) for sale... At walmart.
Walmart. Blister pack packaging.
No charge logic. Not LiPo. LiON. Naked tube cells
Needless to say, I was flabbergasted. Naked lion cells are quite dangerous. If they get shorted, they turn into little bombs. Even worse, they were in the clearance aisle. Who knows what state the chemistry was in.
If I ever see them again, i'll take pictures.
Seek balance young grasshopper.... (And lay off the coffee..)
Shesh...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Ummm, if you're in a coffee shop and already carrying around an accessory (this second battery you propose), why not just carry the A/C adapter instead and plug it in?
A commercial life span of a car is 10 years or 200000 kms in Europe. In the USA, that's still 10 years or 125000 miles. Your 10 to 15 year old car is worth nothing and if it were to fall apart, that is considered normal according to commercial standards.
Now that we have established that, I do agree that if a car that was still made when cars weren't as expendable as they are made currently, it should be reasonably expectable that you won't need major overhaul on most of them after 10 years or 125000 miles, if it has been maintained decently. However, most dealerships only do the minimal required to drag the car to it's 10 year commercial life end and hardly will do proper preventative maintenance. They may charge you for it, but that doesn't mean they will actually do what's required to keep your car in the best condition, regardless of it's commercial value or life span left.
I maintain my own cars, I have been doing this for the last 10 years and my youngest car is 15 years old. All my cars are close to or way over the 200000 km mark. All of them are made by Alfa Romeo. I work on several other brands as well and I can tell you that given to a certain degree, they all are made expendable. I've done practically everything you can do to repair a car on my own cars and/or other peoples cars. once a car is 10 years old, nobody in the professional motor industry is going to consider it economically relevant any more and most cars are made to not last longer than that. Most gasoline engines will have serious wear to piston rings and valve guides, requiring a rebuild to get the power back and the oil consumption reduced. Wheel bearings will have worn. Suspension bearings/bushings will have worn. With the paint technology they had 10 to 15 years ago, your car will most likely be rusting. They had rust proofing pretty well under control, but then the environmental problems of those processes made them illegal and they had to resort to new "cleaner" processes that didn't work very well. There are plenty of other parts that wear out as well. Fans in the car ventilation, door locks and latches, even the car body itself will start showing more flex and metal fatigue. Plastics and such that are responsible for crash absorption will lose strength, seat belt tensioners, the list goes on. It takes a lot of maintenance to keep a car in a "young" condition, especially once you reach the moment that the designed life span for most parts is reached. Making them last longer costs more in production and will result in your vehicle being more expensive than the competition, without a lot of direct benefits that the potential buyer will be aware of. Most car companies choose to produce cheaper and just let the car fall apart after a little over 10 years or 125000 miles as a result.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
It's not the charging that is the issue, it's heat from the laptop. If you removed the battery and just stuck it in an oven at say 40C it would degrade. Batteries are chemical devices, they react to temperature.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
My Macbook Pro permanently sits on my desk at work. I always thought the battery was just for the built in UPS that cuts in whenever the power goes out.
Only last week I sat there peacefully working when I heard desperate screams of 'failing to save' reverberating over my partition wall. At first I assumed they'd experienced a bad throw on their d20. But, out of curiosity I prairie dogged up to see what was going on, and saw that some of my co-workers had succumbed to the dreaded power outage. They mostly just stared blankly at their partition walls murmuring incoherently, but at least one grown man was reduced to tears. It brought back memories of the crash fest that was Windows 95/98.
I've owned various Apple portables (as well as PCs) since the Powerbook 170. Until I owned a G4 iBook, Apple's battery longevity was nothing different than the PC counterparts. I bought a used G4 powerbook when that model was 1.5-2 years old. When I got it, the battery was good for about 6 hours of solid average use. I had it for five years (only replacing it with this Macbook I have now last year) and in all that time, the battery only ever lost about 30% of it's capacity. I still saw a solid 4 hours of use out of it per charge. It was by far the longest I've ever had a laptop battery last (even keeping the comparison to Li-Ions). Comparatively, this Macbook never got great life (maybe 3hrs tops) but in over a year, I've yet to notice it losing any capacity. And in the past, a year is about all the time it ever took for previous laptops' batteries to hold zero charge at all. I had a Sony Vaio that killed it's battery every nine months, and before I bought the iBook, I was just used to a $50 replacement cost annually or so.
From this article (as well as what I've heard from others) at some point between this Macbook and the current models, the batteries or charging method Apple's used have significantly shortened the usable lifespans. Which will probably prove annoying when it eventually comes time to replace this machine in another 3-5 years.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
Hydrogen is great stuff. You just need to store it bonded with carbon. Do it right, and you can make butane for fuel cell usage.
http://www.gizmag.com/usb-charger-butane-fuel-cell-nectar-lilliputian-systems-brookstone/28281/
Take it a step further and let me run my laptop off a Bic lighter or two and i'll be happy.
Life is not for the lazy.
What. The. Eff.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Lifespan is almost completely determined by battery chemistry*. The chemistry is largely fungible and is in the hands of a few major manufacturers. I could imagine in principle that Apple's battery designs might be less safe, but they'd have to go out and find a specialist if they wanted to make batteries that are chemically worse than their competitors.
*It's possible to produce a short-lifespan battery through poor assembly, but those tend to be the sort of lifespans that end with a loud pop and a jet of flame.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
This is one of the reasons I've avoided iDevices (or others with hardwired batteries).
Yes, with some work you can change the battery, but being able to drop in a fresh battery on-the-fly is a very useful thing - especially if you travel - and any product which requires disassembly to do so is crippled IMHO.
Fucking hell mate!
There's people with a lot of free time or no live at all!
-- 29A the number of the Beast
This is not a computer question. This is a battery question. Lithium-Ion batteries should NEVER be completely discharged. I don't care if your battery meter doesn't know how to measure it, that's the computer's problem. NEVER let your laptop battery die and it will last a hell of a lot longer.