Laptop battery life

[Steve_J]

What's the best way to prolong laptop battery life?

1. Leave it connected to the charger continuously when charger power is available?
2. Use it on battery continuously until the battery needs recharging?
3. Something else?

[jchuzi]

While I can't answer your question from personal experience (having never had a laptop), you should get some useful tips from reading Get the most out of your MacBook's battery.

[sandbox]

Here's a complicated answer.
If your running Snow leopard or earlier you can use n ap called CoolBooks http://coolbook.se/CoolBook.html which creates the condition where you can run without a battery on an Intel Dual Core. Running without a battery on  dual core without this ap your Mac will only operate on one core.
If you want to keep the battery in place it's best to exercise it. Run it on and off the cord 50/50. Once a month run it down until the low warning appears, shut it off, let it set for 5 hours, replug it to full charge, that will reset the battery indicator and give you an accurate reading on the remaining battery life. A great part of this ap is that it allows you to control the supply of energy which in turn reduces heat and preserves battery life.

good luck

[Steve_J]

After reading sandboxes reply, I should add the following information;
The laptop is a PowerBook G4, i.e. Not an Intel machine.
The OS is Leopard.

[tacit]

Lithium ion batteries are weird. If you charge them to 100% and then don't use them, you damage them; they start to degrade over time. If you charge them to below about 20% or so and leave them there, they degrade over time. If you run them down to 0% charge, you destroy them irrevocably. (The battery in your laptop has a computer in it that will stop it from ever reaching 0% charge. When it says it's completely empty, it actually has a small emergency reserve yet o keep it from being ruined.)

The best way to prolong the life of a lithium ion battery is to keep the electrons moving. There are all sorts of ways to d this, but generally speaking, they all involve running sometimes off the battery even if you have power available.

If you want to be totally anal, for maximum life, don't discharge them below 40% and don't charge them above 80%. That level of nitpickery isn't usually necessary, though.

[Frances144]

Golly, I never knew that.