Maximizing your Battery Life

For general battery care information, you can see http://www.ebuybatteries.com/battery_knowledge/battery_faq.asp#get-most-of-battery

The link in the initial article for "notebooks" should be directed to: http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

hello all just got my first apple, a powerbook g4 1.67 two days ago, and i was wandering about what apple says about the battery usage interms of the ideal usage being a person using the laptop in a train and then recharging at the office, well my question is what should i do when i get back home, shall i keep the ac plug when its in sleep mode and working for hours or also unplug, use, and recharge

I've had my 12" G4 Powerbook for about a year and a few months. Right around one year the battery had gotten to the point where I would get under an hour of runtime off a charge. After doing a lot of reading, including the links mentioned in the article I decided my battery was killed by never using it. I kept my Powerbook plugged in 100% of the time, only taking it off power maybe 10 times in that entire year. I bought a new battery and now make sure I let it fully discharge at least once a week. With the brightness way down (but still usable) I get about 4 hours. Without Airport I can squeeze out about 4.5.

I would recommend everyone with a portable to check out iBatt (http://www.raynersoftware.com/ibatt/) a very cool tool to see things like recharge rate, total power capacity, average capacity, etc. Plus the registered version allows you to check your battery power level against other users on the net to see where your battery stands as well as some recommendations on what to do. On a side note, I just purchased a BRAND SPANKIN NEW battery for my 12" 867 and this tool rated it as a "B+" due to the fact that it should be holding more juice than it can. What's up with that Apple? Sending out less than optimal batteries for us users? pfffttt whatever

I'm totally the worst Dad ever, my ibook is plugged in a large part of the time. I should really pick up an airport card so I get out more. (but then doesn't using airport use up significantly more power?)

I typically get 2.5 hours out of my 12" Powerbook/1ghz. My 12" iBook 800 used to go for almost 4 hours - I miss that...

My nearly 3-year old iBook lasts about 2 hours on a full charge. I try to keep the screen brightness as low as possible if I really need more than 2 hours of juice. Turning off Airport helps quite a bit as well.

PowerBook G4, 1.5 GHz, 1 GB RAM; year old, about 2-2.5 hours on battery with web browsing and iTunes The 4.5-5 hours for a PowerBook that Apple reports is as close to an outright lie as you can get without getting sued. I'm not sure what they do to a system to optimize this number, but I'm positive it's not actually USABLE when it's getting this kind of battery life. I've had 3 PowerBook G4's, and I've never gotten close to that on any of them. With my screen at a tolerable brightness, no unncecesary apps open, and moderate usage, I've maybe gotten 3 hours, once, with exceptionally good luck.

my 9 month old ibook g4 will last 3+ hours on battery. my 1 ghz titanium powerbook which is two years old or so will keep a charge for two to 3 hours depending on what i am doing with at the time.