[P1] iBook Battery Full Discharge ?

[albookuser at Phreaker.net]

On 6/21/04 9:18 PM, "MacAddictvja" <vern1234 at pacbell.net> wrote:

> Is it a good idea to fully discharge the iBook battery often? How often
> should you do that?

>From what I've read it isn't a good idea to fully discharge a LiIon battery
- that is take it down to nothing. But neither is it a good idea to
repeatedly discharge only a small amount and recharge it. My understanding
is that Lithium Ion batteries lifespan is based mostly on how many times it
is recharged and charging from 10% to 100% is about the same as charging
from 80% to 100%.

This seems to be born out from usage at work where we have several portable
labs. These machines tend to be used for 45 minutes at a time and then back
on the charger, often for maybe 10-15 minutes before being back in use on
battery power. Each mobile lab also has a recharging station for extra
batteries. Compared to the teacher notebooks we go through batteries in the
mobile labs like crazy. Where I tend to go through 2-5 recharge cycles a
week on my own PowerBook, the computers in our mobile labs go through at
least two a day - and that would be a low usage day. More typical would be
4-5 in a day with the battery getting swapped out at least once.

david