MacBook Pro battery health?
I have and early 2011 13" MacBook Pro. The other day, the "service battery" warning came up, so I took it to the Apple Store. The "Genius" there told me that because I do not let my battery die every time I use my laptop, I am mistreating the battery and therefore the battery cannot be replaced on Apple Care. At the time, I had about 295 charge cycles on my almost 2 year old laptop. When I told the tech I didn't know this because I was never told I had to let it die every time I used it, and that they should inform you of that, he snarkily responded "well, when you buy a car they don't teach you how to drive it".
The man told me to let my computer completely die, and then let my laptop completely charge without using it for several days to "retrain" it, and that AppleCare can only replace a battery that's "in the red". When I got home from the Apple Store, the warning light was gone despite me not touching my laptop at all.
I did some research and the Apple website, first of all, said it would replace a defective battery if it shows diminished capacity or it's failed, not just failed. I also noted that these batteries are rated for 1000 charge cycles. Also, I saw that the Apple website recommended fully discharging your battery once a month for optimal capacity, not after every use. This is what I already do.
At the AppleStore, when the tech was running his software I noted that my battery health was about 80.5%. I installed a battery monitoring application from the App Store called Battery Guard and it is telling me I currently have battery health of 78% and 300 charge cycles, so it seems to me that by allowing my computer to discharge/recharge, my battery health is declining.
Does anyone have experience with this, or advice about what I should do? I'm considering going back to the Apple Store and confronting them with my new knowledge that I got straight from the apple website.
racazu wrote:
The "Genius" there told me that because I do not let my battery die every time I use my laptop
That's the worst advice someone can give you. You don't have to let your computer run out of battery or you will damage more the battery. Instead, I recommend to make full cycles (discharge the battery, put it to charge when you consider necessary and charge it fully).
Unibody Macs batteries are designed to have 80% of their capacity after 1000 charges. Read > http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html Something happens with your battery, so take the computer to an Apple Store or reseller to have the battery replaced, more when OS X is telling you that your battery has to be replaced
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http://www.apple.com/support/macbook_macbookpro/batteryupdate/
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