Is it better to leave my macbook plugged it.... when.... read more!

Question

Hi guys,
do you think its better that i just leave my macbook plugged in all the time *if i can* ... or should I just use the battery whenever I feel like it? I know that your supposed to do at least one full drain with your computer at least once a month... but If i'm going from room to room and just feel like not dragging around an adapter, is it bad for the battery? or is it good becasue I'm using the battery more and keeping the parts moving and warmed up rather than just never really using it?
Like right now my battery status is "not charging" even though its not plugged in!
the only reason I like to keep it plugged in a lot is because I record music a lot, and can't really do that on a low battery power (if the macbook shuts off I could lose data)
or is all of this really that big a deal?

Answer 1

torsenstarrow wrote:
Hey lyssa, that does help a bit. What about how my battery drains to under 95 % even when it's plugged in... and then it charges back to 100% in like 20 minutes... is that bad for the battery, because it happens when its plugged in (it slowly drains to below 95%... will that add battery cycles onto my laptop?
That's inevitable and not particularly bad. What would be bad would be that it went down to 99% and tried to top off the charge to 100%. That would mean more attempts to charge up to 100%. It's not that you don't want it to charge up to 100%, but it's going to degrade slightly every time the battery capacity gets to 100%. Near 100% is where it generates a lot more heat and tends to degrade battery capacity the most. Taking it down below a certain capacity also seems to degrade the battery. However - if you want to actually use the battery, these are normal things and the battery is considered a replaceable part.
I won't bore you with the details, but hybrid car batteries are designed to stay between 40-75% of theoretical capacity. By avoiding the extremes of charge and discharge, they can go through hundreds of thousands of these partial charge-discharge cycles while a standard use battery might go through maybe under 1000. The overall amount of energy cycling through a hybrid car battery would be maybe 30-50 times more than a standard use battery. Of course MacBook charging system isn't designed for that kind of use.
Charging a lithium rechargeable battery is an exercise in careful management of heat generation and battery life. Some of the earlier lithium rechargeable charging systems weren't very good and didn't slow down the charge as it approached 100%. You'd get overheating batteries as well as a few that caught on fire (the Sony factory fire in the 90's took out most of the world's Li-ion battery production at the time). Fortunately lithium battery charging technology has improved to the point where fires are extremely rare.