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Battery Conditioning?

dyerucf

dyerucf

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 15, 2008
159
4
Alpharetta, GA
Well I have an Air on order, delivers the 15th but I am eager to cancel that order and pick one up in the store if I am able before then. I just have a battery questions. When I get my new macbook air, when ever and how ever that may be, how do I condition my battery to start to ensure the best battery performance.
 
First Charge

I remember reading somewhere there was some 'first charge' thing that would help break in the battery or something along those lines.
 
plug it in straight away. charge it to full charge and leave it for a couple of hours. use it unplugged until it sleeps. leave for a couple of hours. plug it back in and then charge it to full. repeat every 1-2 months. also its perfectly fine to leave it on charge for long periods of time. just remember to calibrate.
 
richthomas said:
plug it in straight away. charge it to full charge and leave it for a couple of hours. use it unplugged until it sleeps. leave for a couple of hours. plug it back in and then charge it to full. repeat every 1-2 months. also its perfectly fine to leave it on charge for long periods of time. just remember to calibrate.
Click to expand...

what he said :p
 
richthomas said:
plug it in straight away. charge it to full charge and leave it for a couple of hours. use it unplugged until it sleeps. leave for a couple of hours. plug it back in and then charge it to full. repeat every 1-2 months. also its perfectly fine to leave it on charge for long periods of time. just remember to calibrate.
Click to expand...

Doing that even as I type... The battery was registering only 95% capacity left after 5 cycles (funny, I only did two...) Will see how the conditioning works. Apple says to turn off any app.'s, let it go into deep sleep of 5 hours or more, than plug-in and charge fully.
 
richthomas said:
plug it in straight away. charge it to full charge and leave it for a couple of hours. use it unplugged until it sleeps. leave for a couple of hours. plug it back in and then charge it to full. repeat every 1-2 months. also its perfectly fine to leave it on charge for long periods of time. just remember to calibrate.
Click to expand...
The only thing that I can add is that every 2-4 weeks might be a little better than 1-2 months, just my experience in the past.
 
richthomas said:
plug it in straight away. charge it to full charge and leave it for a couple of hours. use it unplugged until it sleeps. leave for a couple of hours. plug it back in and then charge it to full. repeat every 1-2 months. also its perfectly fine to leave it on charge for long periods of time. just remember to calibrate.
Click to expand...

while doing the first charge up... if it's plugged in can i use the laptop??
or is it recommended to just leave it alone while it charges??
 
i was reading somewhere else that the battery takes forever to charge to 100%. I guess it might be true... Went to zero today, plugged it in at around 5:30, came back at 8:30 and it still is not full. (0:52 until full)...

That kinda sucks.....
 
frogywill said:
i was reading somewhere else that the battery takes forever to charge to 100%. I guess it might be true... Went to zero today, plugged it in at around 5:30, came back at 8:30 and it still is not full. (0:52 until full)...

That kinda sucks.....
Click to expand...

My macbook takes about 4hours to go from dead to 100%...sounds about right
 
Full charge capacity seems low after initial calibration...?

So even though there's no mention of a need to calibrate the MBA, I decided that it couldn't hurt and I calibrated my new MacBook Air right away per Apple's instructions on their website for the Macbook/Macbook Pro line: fully charged it when I initially plugged it in, after reaching full charge, let it stay charging for at least two full hours, then unplugged and let it discharge and go to sleep and left it sleeping for five hours (well, actually it may have been closer to 4-4.5 hours-it was in deep sleep mode when I woke it and plugged it back in) and then I fully recharged. Now it's saying that my full charge battery capacity is 4899 mAh whereas the original battery capacity was 5200 mAh...why would it have dropped this much after calibrating? Is this normal?
 
PieMac said:
So even though there's no mention of a need to calibrate the MBA, I decided that it couldn't hurt and I calibrated my new MacBook Air right away per Apple's instructions on their website for the Macbook/Macbook Pro line: fully charged it when I initially plugged it in, after reaching full charge, let it stay charging for at least two full hours, then unplugged and let it discharge and go to sleep and left it sleeping for five hours (well, actually it may have been closer to 4-4.5 hours-it was in deep sleep mode when I woke it and plugged it back in) and then I fully recharged. Now it's saying that my full charge battery capacity is 4899 mAh whereas the original battery capacity was 5200 mAh...why would it have dropped this much after calibrating? Is this normal?
Click to expand...

Don't worry just software bug. My battery works longer now, but when I first calibrated it, it was stuck on battery finishing charge. Easily fixed it by unplugging and plugging back in then rebooting and it was 100% and my battery life went up.

A note to all if you see it taking longer than it should and if you have already calibrated, simply unplug adapter, shut down mba, plug it back in, turn on mba.
 
ahaxton said:
Don't worry just software bug. My battery works longer now, but when I first calibrated it, it was stuck on battery finishing charge. Easily fixed it by unplugging and plugging back in then rebooting and it was 100% and my battery life went up.

A note to all if you see it taking longer than it should and if you have already calibrated, simply unplug adapter, shut down mba, plug it back in, turn on mba.
Click to expand...

I figured I might not be getting an accurate reading, but I tried what you did plus running repair permissions and then rebooting and it still reads the same...actually it now reads a little lower: 4883 and with 3 charge cycles?? I'm hoping it will eventually creep back up again closer to the 5200 level. My MacBook Pro would fluctuate but then it was almost a year old...not brand new. Otherwise, my MBA seems to be fine-charging up to full capacity and in nominal time with no issues.
 
What would be a reasonable expectation in terms of battery use time from 100% to 0%, surfing the internet?
 
cedar said:
What would be a reasonable expectation in terms of battery use time from 100% to 0%, surfing the internet?
Click to expand...

I'd say for 1.6/80 it'd be somewhere in the 4 hour range.
Of course if you got SSD you'll enjoy a whole lot more :)
 
Not per Mossberg this morning....

"In this test, the SSD made little difference in the MacBook Air and, in fairness, Apple is making no claims of any significant battery-life gains on its SSD model. The SSD MacBook gave me just five more minutes of battery life. Apple says this is because its hard-drive model already uses a very low-power drive."



ahaxton said:
I'd say for 1.6/80 it'd be somewhere in the 4 hour range.
Of course if you got SSD you'll enjoy a whole lot more :)
Click to expand...
 
I got 2 hours, 54 minutes surfing the internet, with about 5 minutes playing video's on utube. A little disappointed.
 
i think it does extend battery life

i did it just in case haha
i left it untouched while calibrating the first charge

if i dim down brightness and turn off wifi
i can get around 5 hours 30 min
if i have it full brightness and with wifi watching a movie
i get around 2.5 hours
 
cedar said:
I got 2 hours, 54 minutes surfing the internet, with about 5 minutes playing video's on utube. A little disappointed.
Click to expand...

I'd try doing the calibration or a SMC reset.

I've been getting over 4 hours on battery just doing email, web, and other minor programs.
 
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