Sunday, July 19th, 2009

Tips for prolonging battery life for your MBP

First up, some references:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=278451
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1232366
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490
http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

After sloughing through silos of Google results, I summarize my findings as below:

1) When you first get your battery, do a calibration. (go to pt 3).
2) Also, calibrate at least once a month. (go to pt 3)
3) You can calibrate by first charging to its full capacity, and leaving it in this state for 2 hours. Then, perform a full discharge. Leave it for 5 hours after your MBP sleeps… (save your work!) Next, simply leave your connector in until battery is fully charged.
4) Ensure 2 discharge cycle twice a week at least - i.e. make sure u earn 2 discharge cycles a week. 1 discharge cycle can span over several usage without the connector plugged in. You can verify this with programs like iStat.

Voila… now let me come back to this post 6 months later (;