Running w/o the battery?

[rye9]

Well I've lost 9% battery capacity in 9 months... which I realize isnt so great.. bc i go through a cycle a day.. so to use my battery less I'd just plug my iBoook in like all day.. but I was wondering... if the iBook is plugged in and I take the battery out while it's plugged in.. is that safe and ok?

 

[WildCowboy]

It will run without the battery, but it makes weight distribution uneven, removes one of the feet on the bottom, and opens up some the internals to dust and possible damage. There's really no reason to run it with the battery removed...just run it off the AC and run the battery down to calibrate it every month or so.

 

[PatrickF]

There's also a bug somewhere that locks the CPU to 1GHz when you run off mains without a battery plugged in. Not sure if 10.4.7 resolved this, but you can easily check with CoreDuoTemp.

 

[Nermal]

If I'm not mistaken, CoreDuoTemp won't run on an iBook.

 

[PatrickF]

DOH! It's still too early here!

Scrap my last comment, I don't believe it affects the iBook.

The iBook's battery does, however, have one of the feet on the battery so if you take the battery out the laptop won't be stable anymore.

 

[gnasher729]

Well I've lost 9% battery capacity in 9 months... which I realize isnt so great.. bc i go through a cycle a day.. so to use my battery less I'd just plug my iBoook in like all day.. but I was wondering... if the iBook is plugged in and I take the battery out while it's plugged in.. is that safe and ok?

For MacBook owners: Remeber that whenever your power cable comes off, your MacBook will shut down immediately, and you will lose all your work. So I would not use a MacBook that way.

 

[merc669]

For MacBook owners: Remeber that whenever your power cable comes off, your MacBook will shut down immediately, and you will lose all your work. So I would not use a MacBook that way.

I have a MBP for use on my travel. However when I am at home I still mostly use the MBP exclusively due to liking the MBP better than my alternative which is a XP Computer. So the question is; Is it alright to have the battery installed and continously on AC? In this scenerio what is the best method to maintain max battery life and be able to use the MBP when not on the road? Thanks!!

Bill.......

 

[PatrickF]

I have a MBP for use on my travel. However when I am at home I still mostly use the MBP exclusively due to liking the MBP better than my alternative which is a XP Computer. So the question is; Is it alright to have the battery installed and continously on AC? In this scenerio what is the best method to maintain max battery life and be able to use the MBP when not on the road? Thanks!!

Bill.......

Using your notebook on mains power is perfectly fine. That's how I use mine most of the time. Apple recommends that you calibrate your battery once a month. Follow the second set of instructions from this article http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86284.

 

[mkrishnan]

As Patrick's post said.. yes, mains is fine. But also your capacity is going to go down, as a fact of life. Even if you take a battery and don't use it at all, it will slowly lose its capacity over time. You occasionally get significantly more than 4 good years out of a battery, but it's not the norm, and it's better to just not expect it....

 

[JurgenWigg]

For MacBook owners: Remeber that whenever your power cable comes off, your MacBook will shut down immediately, and you will lose all your work. So I would not use a MacBook that way.

Really? Never happened to me...

 

[PatrickF]

Really? Never happened to me...

I think he's referring to using a MacBook without the battery plugged in. The MagSafe connector can be quite easy to pull out accidentally.

 

[mkrishnan]

I think he's referring to using a MacBook without the battery plugged in. The MagSafe connector can be quite easy to pull out accidentally.

Yeah, the big laptops (15" and 17") have secondary backups that allow the computer to briefly persist in sleep mode with no power source, but the MacBook does not.

Although...doesn't the MacBook support safe sleep? Meaning if this did happen, it should hibernate rather than lose your data?