notebook is a 10 year old macbook pro without macos I installed xubuntu 24.04 in. It comes with an embedded battery.
First notebook I bought, not from apple, had a removable battery. The vendor told me to maximize its life I shouldn’t plug the battery in, unless I need it (like for traveling). This way, I’ve managed to keep the original battery in good working condition for 8 years so far.
Back to the macbook: I cannot remove the battery and constantly loading it to up to 80% and discharge it up to 20% seems ridiculous. Furthermore, this would deplete the battery even faster, I believe.
What can I do to spare the battery as much as possible?
Just charge it and use it. Recharging and discharging the battery shortens the life of the battery. In an ideal world, you would charge the laptop battery to 50% and then never charge or use it again, but that’s makes your battery fucking useless.
So use your laptop. My advice is to keep it plugged in as much as possible. Most laptops (even 10 years ago) can run directly off the wall power, which stops the battery from degrading (as fast) as older laptops where they were constantly powered by the battery, and the charger just kept it topped off.
Most of the battery advice you hear is just voodoo bullshit, or it makes a very small difference in the overall life of the battery. Just use your computer like normal.
As long as it is still running you should be fine, but it’s better to keep your battery around 80%. There are tools that block the charge until you ask for a full charge when needed
My son has a gaming laptop that is plugged in constantly. I vaguely remember reading that all modern laptops protect the battery to some degree, though not sure how. I’m guessing it is by using the mains while charging. Not sure what the damage is to a battery that is constantly fully charged.
No it’s got a charge controller that keeps it from fucking up the battery.
Source: I’ve owned many macbooks and worked on many more. The documentation and best practices for both implementing charge controllers for lithium ion batteries and the specific best practices for computers and phones with lithium ion batteries.
Your battery ought to be replaceable once the bottom panel is off the case. Just unplug it and use alcohol to weaken the glue while you scrape it out. New ones are less than $100.
E: if you’re worried about the thing catching on fire, stay on the latest macos you can and trust what it tells you in the uhh battery health section.
If you’re gonna use Linux then go ahead and replace the battery so that you’re not worrying about it failing miserably to communicate with the charge controller or battery itself and tell you when telhe thing is fucked and need replacing.
If you’re gonna use Linux then go ahead and replace the battery so that you’re not worrying about it failing miserably to communicate with the charge controller or battery itself and tell you when telhe thing is fucked and need replacing.
I’m already using linux, macos was nuked.
I don’t understand this paragraph. Do you mean new batteries for this model (macbook pro from 2014) work better with linux?
no, i mean that linux doesn’t always interface correctly with batteries and charge controllers in devices and subsequently can’t always tell the user about battery health.
the idea i was hoping to convey was that it’s fine to rely on the macos battery health indicators to figure out if you should replace it, but if you can’t rely on that software and especially if it’s an old battery its a good idea to replace it.
this is what sudo tlp-stat -b prints:
— TLP 1.6.1 --------------------------------------------
+++ Battery Care
Plugin: generic
Supported features: none available
+++ Battery Status: BAT0
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/manufacturer = DP
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/model_name = bq20z451
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/cycle_count = 666
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_full_design = 6330 [mAh]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_full = 5043 [mAh]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_now = 4936 [mAh]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/current_now = 0 [mA]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/status = Full
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_control_start_threshold = (not available)
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_control_end_threshold = (not available)
Charge = 97.9 [%]
Capacity = 79.7 [%]
do you still recommend a new battery?
nah you got about 400 more cycles at least.
keep it plugged in whenever you can to make it last longer.
Try to cycle it once every two weeks or something. Unfortunately there isn’t much of a right answer to your question, there are advantages and disadvantages of both approaches. This is a good read on the subject: https://batterycare.net/en/guide.html
